
Class 4-_U 



Book 



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Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

NURSERY ETHICS 

FROM THE CHILD'S STANDPOINT 

THE CHILDREN'S HEALTH 

SOUTHERN HEARTS 

VACATION HINTS 

PRINCIPLES OF CORRECT DRESS 

NOVEL WAYS OF ENTERTAINING 

CHARACTERS OF DICKENS 

POPULAR EDITION, ILLUSTRATED: 
ALSO, EDITION DE LUXE 



THE MOTHER IN 
EDUCATION 



By 

Florence Hull Winterburn 

Author of Nursery Ethics, From the Child's Stand- 
pointy The Children's Health, etc. 



NEW YORK 

McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 

1914 



4 



Copyright, 1914, by 
McBrtde, Nast & Co. 



Published* October, 1914 

NOV 16(914 

©CI.A388401' 



DEDICATION 
To the Rich Mother, with unlimited opportunity to 
start her children in life well equipped with broad 
culture ; 

To the Poor Mother, making up in the keenness of her 
intelligence, the zeal of her affection, for the depriva- 
tion of mere money to carry out her worthy ambi- 
tions ; 

To the Cultured Mother, filled with enthusiasm for 
her ideals, and able to direct her sons and daughters 
better than any other teacher; 

To the Simple Mother, who doubts her ability to give 
her children that aid no other can give so well; 
To all the Mothers of our beloved America, looked 
upon with hope and faith by the rest of the world now, 
as the destined agents for the up-building of the race; 
This book is humbly dedicated by the author. 



FOKEWOKD 

IS there any joy so pure and complete as that of 
seeing a young nature unfolding day by day 
under your influence and training ? And when 
that child is your own, and all the comfort and 
recompense of his development will belong to you, 
does not the pleasure of his education, so far as you 
can contribute to it, become irresistible ? 

Believing as I do, that an intelligent mother can 
do wonderful things in the mental education of her 
child, as well as in that far more important matter, 
development of his character, I put it forward not 
only as an urgent duty, but as one of a woman's best 
privileges, to give of her higher energies to her child's 
development. 

The great lesson of this century is that of a broader 
humanity. We are best when we give out most, 
smallest when we live merely for ourselves. The fine 
privilege of an equal education with men has been 
given to women. Surely, they can employ it in no 



FOREWORD 

better way than in giving to the world better citizens. 

In education the beginning is everything. Happy 
is that child whose foundation has been well laid at 
home, before he goes to school where he will be dealt 
with as one of a crowd ! What I state I have proved 
by practice. I know that school education can be 
shortened by several years through the efforts of a 
mother, and that nothing outside can sujDply the place 
of an atmosphere of home culture. 

Nor is the work complicated or hard. The 
scheme outlined in this book is so practical and sim- 
ple that it will surely appeal to all mothers who de- 
sire to do their best by their children. To such I 
dedicate it, with the earnest hope that they may find 
as much satisfaction in it as I did while working it 
out in actual practice. 

For permission to reproduce some matter which has 
appeared in their pages in the form of magazine arti- 
cles thanks are due the Woman's Home Companion 
and the New England Magazine. 

F. H. W. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction i 

I The Inspiration of Mother Love .... 1 

II How Mothers May Help Each Other ... 16 

III The Birth of Faculty 33 

IV Through Play to Work . . 49 

V The Mother Tongue 63 

VI Cultivating Observation 81 

VII Imagination Plays 10 ° 

VIII Nature Studies 116 

IX Form, Size and Number I 29 

X Mother Wit — and Humor 147 

XI The Eight Method in Eeading 160 

XII Self-Expression through Drawing . . . .179 

XIII Early Social Ideas 198 

XIV Children's Literary Life 216 

XV Foreign Languages 237 

XVI Accomplishments 257 

XVII Infant Politicians 27 ° 

XVIII The Advantages of Travel 283 

XIX Talented Children 296 

XX Esthetic Education 310 

XXI Children in Society 324 

Bibliography 337 



THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 



INTRODUCTION 

IN starting out upon any work we first try to 
classify our materials, putting together all those 
things that are related, and setting aside those 
that are incongruous with our general plan. What 
builder, wishing to construct a cement house, would 
have a pile of granite blocks occupying the center 
space in his lot ? Or what housekeeper, intending to 
make cake, would begin by setting out an array of 
pots and skillets on her working table % In order to 
get the best results the artist who has an oil painting 
in hand concentrates his mind altogether on the proc- 
ess of oil painting, eliminating for the time everything 
belonging to crayon or water colors, and devoting 
himself entirely to the work he is setting out to do. 

This is the law for the reformer in morals and for 
the educator also. The very first thing that either of 
them try to effect is the separation of classes of in- 
dividuals according to certain well known qualities. 
Then, when they have their soldiers drawn up in line 



ii INTRODUCTION' 

they go to work to drill them, and subject them to 
disciplinary regulations which are made according to 
the standardizing of their several capacities. For the 
purpose of show nothing could be better. It is a 
pretty sight to see a crowd moving in harmony, unit- 
ing their voices in a stirring song, wearing almost the 
same expression of countenance as they are inspired 
with the same sentiment of patriotism or devotion. 
They look very much alike and form a perfect com- 
munity so long as the necessity for acting together 
keeps them joined. This is all that their disciplina- 
rians either attempt or effect. The instant they are 
let loose from one another things begin to happen. 
Nature has a chance to re-act against artificial re- 
straints, and the individual shows what his raw ma- 
terial consists in, separated from that part of him 
which has been so nicely drilled. 

Who has not marked with some interest the sailors 
taking their shore leave from a man-of-war ? They 
go about the town near which their ship is anchored, 
not singly, but in groups, leaning up against one an- 
other, as dependent as schools of fish, almost as help- 
less as the fish to resist baits thrown to them by exploit- 
ers of their simplicity. If one gets off by himself he 



INTRODUCTION iii 

is almost certain to fall into mischief. Then he is 
punished like a child, and not allowed more leave for 
some time, in order that he may learn to obey certain 
rules of conduct that have come to answer for him in 
the place of self-imposed moral standards. But there 
are always sailors who are above the average; who 
incur no punishments, who are trustworthy and be- 
yond the reach of common temptations. They are the 
sailors who come of good families, who have had some 
training at home before entering the navy, whose in- 
telligence has been developed in childhood and whom 
their mothers taught things never learned so well in 
later life. Or else they belong to that brave, rare 
squad, the self-educated, who have some fine instinct 
in them that puts them above the average man, and 
who, despite all obstacles and stumbling blocks work 
out their own salvation. But it is at a terrible waste 
of life and strength. In moral training as in all mat- 
ters of education the beginning is everything. It 
takes more time and power to undo a wrong beginning 
and go straight afterwards than to live two ordinary 
lives, where the beginning has been normal. 

Now, similarly, the schools drill children in squads, 
rating them according to the most general rules, stand- 



iv INTRODUCTION 

ardizing their capacities on the hedonistic principle 
of the best good for the greater number even though 
injustice must thereby be done to exceptional pupils. 
For the learning of facts the system is fair enough, 
although even there those gifted with the best mem- 
ories will forge ahead of the rest and then weary for 
new matter long before the others are ready for it. 
But superficially looked at the results are very strik- 
ing. Twenty children, a hundred, a thousand chil- 
dren, all with eager, interested faces, looking and lis- 
tening, imbibing knowledge according to the easy 
fashion of present day instruction, and seemingly 
making rapid progress in science, literature and his- 
tory. Looked at in the mass there is no appreciable 
difference in them, or in their ability to receive and di- 
gest learning. The most efficient system that educa- 
tional reformers have been able to devise is now in 
operation in all our better schools, and nothing that 
can be done to make learning easy has been neglected. 
Constant improvements are being made in the class- 
ifying system, strenuous efforts attempted in the way 
of " individualizing " instruction so as to bring out the 
natural ability of the child. It is heroic, this enthu- 
siasm of teachers to separate from the mass particular 



INTRODUCTION v 

atoms and minister to their personal needs. But they 
have a work in hand here that must always be in- 
creasingly difficult ; that is beset by drawbacks that no 
enthusiasm can overcome, because they are planted on 
the bed-rock soil of natural differences not possible to 
be understood by strangers or appreciated by any 
one who is not intimately acquainted with the char- 
acter of the child from the very beginning of his 
life. 

Moreover, in justice to all, no exceptions may be 
made in the regulations that are for the welfare of the 
mass. If a certain child is to be taken out of the 
mass on account of one particular quality yet can- 
not be elevated to the class above on account of not 
being up to its standard in other essentials, he must 
remain where he is, with his efficiency standardized 
according to its lowest manifestation. Not only in 
the big schools does this difficulty arise but in every 
school. One of a principal's chief troubles is to clas- 
sify his pupils especially when his classes are small, 
and his boast is that he gives " individual " instruc- 
tion. Always the one rule must be observed because 
getting away from it is an impossibility: the child 
must be rated according to his ignorance and not ac- 



vi INTRODUCTION 

cording to his knowledge. He will be taught that 
which he has no use for along with that which he 
should have because the others need both. He must 
lose time and energy because his loss is a necessary 
part of the game that plays fair with the rest. 

So he is drilled with his class. Again, it is a fair 
and sightly instance of modern methods in education, 
this drama of crowds of young people all having the 
same general outside appearance of knowledge, all 
having, as the valedictorians say, " traversed the same 
paths of learning, and now separating for their indi- 
vidual careers." But now that the mutual depend- 
ence of class interests and — to be frank — class aid 
secretly practised, is over and each tub stands on its 
own bottom, what will be the fate of the tub ? If it 
is a leaky vessel, a defective individuality, now is the 
time when all its defects will become painfully ap- 
parent. Idiosyncrasies will start into relief, never 
having been suspected while the crowd concealed them, 
and deficiencies unprovided for by a system that ap- 
plied to all will make the individual quake with a 
sense of ignorance and overwhelm him with a convic- 
tion of being at a disadvantage with life. Diogenes 
in his tub was well enough, but how about a troupe 



INTRODUCTION vii 

of Diogeneses, all at odds with the world and deter- 
mined to be eccentric? 

The school trains children well for community 
needs, for citizenship and the exigencies of war and 
fires. It opens up to them the world of literature and 
science by teaching them the letters. It offers them 
a liberal knowledge of business and the arts by the 
power to read the newspapers. It sends them forth 
fortified in soul by acquaintance with heroes of his- 
tory and by reiterated rules of conduct that apply to 
all their public relations with one another. All this 
is within its function, and it performs its duty well. 

But there ar.e things that the school cannot teach, 
that it can never teach though it should burst in 
the effort, and these things are what make life most 
worth the living. The best system of school instruc- 
tion that can be devised can only effect the partial 
development of a human being. All those qualities 
that are peculiarly his own, that make him " differ- 
ent " and consequently valuable to himself, are un- 
touched by methods of instruction that have treated 
him simply as a member of the community. He 
has been taught to read; it may be a blessing, it 
may be a curse. That depends upon the bent of his 



viii INTRODUCTION" 

mind; upon the kind of influences his character has 
been subjected to for the larger period of his growth 
and development, which is manifestly that portion 
of his time that is or ought to be spent at home. 
If it is spent in the street then so much the worse. 
But in any event it is a thing apart from the school. 
The tastes and tendencies that have been encouraged 
in him either by a wise parent or by his comrades 
in the street will decide his destiny; not the fact 
of his knowing who Abraham Lincoln was. Not 
knowledge but our sympathies inspire us to any sort 
of action; and sympathy is a matter of infantile 
habit. The child leams to be hard and cruel or 
generous and forbearing from his mother. Else in 
the furnace of affliction, else not at all. And out of 
his sympathies comes his rank in the world. Noth- 
ing can gain place for him, nothing limit him but 
his capacity for sympathy, which, is the force that 
moves his intelligence. It is the duty of the school 
to shut the door against the very display of person- 
ality which is the life and soul of individual de- 
velopment. Even if an odd teacher encourages the 
expression of unusual ideas the school community in 
general will hoot it down. Consequently it is a mat- 



INTRODUCTION ix 

ter of anxious effort on the part of the unusual child 
to conceal his eccentricities. He endeavors with all 
his might to be n,o better and no worse than the 
average of his class ; no wiser and not more ignorant, 
to be the essential opposite probably, of what he de- 
sires to be, in order to subserve the ends of popular- 
ity. 

Tlie child should be educated as an individual. If 
he cannot get the education at school is he to go with- 
out it ? There are many children who apparently 
must go without it; the children of parents who are 
too ignorant or too busy to do their duty. For emi- 
grants, for the very poor and ignorant the school 
steps in and offers a makeshift at this work. It has 
tried hard to fulfil the duty of " character building " 
which implies the development of qualities and tal- 
ents, of tastes and habits ; and in the case of the docile 
ignoramus, having no offset at home which he can 
respect so much as he respects his teacher, no code 
that disagrees, no social influences that re-mold his 
ideas, it answers. It is better than no effort at all. 
But are parents who have means and leisure, who 
have culture not only above the average but capacity 
that seeks an outlet beyond the routine of daily work, 



x INTRODUCTION 

who yearn for opportunities to benefit the world, are 
these in the right to leave the individuality of their 
child to be treated in the rough as the nature of the 
less fortunate is ? This is not equality but brutality. 
This is losing the advantage of possessing the means 
of the higher education and putting our child down 
again on the level from which his family has arisen 
by its own worth. 

Every child should have the best possible start in 
the race. If he can be entered in class B he should 
not be sunk to class J or K. An immense quantity 
of time and power may be saved not only to himself 
but to the state by his receiving at home all the previ- 
ous education his parents can give him. If the child 
of educated parents could be entered in school in the 
rank above the primary grade that grade could be 
left for the advantage of those who have not the good 
fortune to possess educated parents. The child of 
happier chance would not then have his budding am- 
bition to make rapid progress weakened and stultified 
by being kept back with a weaker class, and that class 
would be enabled to proceed at the leisurely rate 
agreeing with its relatively lower intelligence. It 
is both a selfish and hedonistic proposition, taking 



INTRODUCTION xi 

account of the best welfare of onr own child first 
but giving heed also to the real welfare of the mass 
outside. The one objection that may be urged against 
removing the child of cultured parentage from as- 
sociation with those of ignorant parents at the stage 
of primary training, to the seeming loss of the latter, 
is met in this way: in infancy the influence of evil 
— and ignorance is to be so ranked in this connection 
— is much stronger than the influence for good among 
those of equal age. The less intelligent child, or 
child whose intelligence is not developed, will be more 
prominent through his ignorance than the better in- 
structed child is through his ability. Every solecism 
committed by the child who comes into social circles 
above his experience furnishes food for comment and 
conceit in his more fortunate companions. He would 
himself rate it a joy to escape this ordeal until he 
shall have received a little more preparation. And 
the superior child would also have the advantage of 
being only among his compeers for that period of his 
life when his mind is at its most susceptible state for 
receiving impressions. Conceit would be kept down 
in him and ambition stimulated. He would feel the 
need of doing his best in order to keep his place 



xii INTRODUCTION. 

among those as well prepared as himself. The aver- 
age standard would he raised hy the superiority of 
individuals. 

The school is a world by itself. Does any one 
doubt that it is better for the individual to enter into 
this world fortified against evil influences by a char- 
acter previously strengthened by some mental disci- 
pline than to go forth as tender as an unfledged 
chicken ? 

One of the objections brought against large schools 
by careful parents is that of bad associations. The 
weight and truth of this objection is much greater 
than is commonly known when it is uttered. But 
it is done away with when the child mingling with 
ignorant or vicious children knows enough to resist 
evil and to afford an example of better conduct. If 
he has received at home the essential preliminary ed- 
ucation he can go through that ordeal unscathed. A 
strong individuality is powerful against low com- 
munity influences. 

Only in the home can the child properly develop 
his individuality. Let parents cease to believe that 
they do their whole duty in sending their child to 
school. A complete education must combine the 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

community teaching of the school with the individ- 
ual teaching of the home. Putting aside the 
question of physical and moral education, even 
intellectual education itself depends for its best in- 
terests largely upon parents. For mental activity 
starts from feeling, and all the higher thoughts 
that come to us as the result of knowledge have 
their springs deep down in our emotional life. 
What we learn to admire, what we learn to love in 
our earlier years, becomes the object of our ambition 
in maturity; and as will is merely a wish turned 
into an action, and our ultimate character is the result 
of willing, it is evident that the most powerful agents 
of our destiny are those that first stir up in us aspira- 
tions and intentions. 

Is it not important then, that the parent who pos- 
sesses the influence to mold character should exert it 
intelligently? Is it not a mother's duty to give all 
the time and pains necessary to that individual edu- 
cation of her children that can only be carried on in 
the home and under her supervision? Household 
work is becoming every day more scientific and con- 
sequently less arduous ; women have more and more 
time for the higher things of life: what is higher 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

than the training of the young beings given into their 
charge ? 

Perfect education is the blending of home care with 
school discipline, the uniting of individual develop- 
ment with community life. To the school belongs its 
indispensable part but to the parent belongs a duty 
that is even more important. If the child could re- 
ceive but one part of his education I doubt very much 
if it would not be better for his ultimate welfare that 
his character should be trained and his intelligence 
developed by a home education than that he should 
miss this entirely and only profit by school discipline. 

It is a striking proof of the truth of this assump- 
tion that the individuals who are leaders in the world 
in the cause of humanity have had mothers whose 
characters have been an influence in their lives, while 
those who stand for everything that makes against the 
general welfare have been early thrown upon the care 
of the state for their entire training and have missed 
the gentler culture of the home. 



THE 
MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

CHAPTER I 
The Inspiration of Mother Love 

u Everywhere throughout this nation the School of Home 
was the most important detail of the educational system. 
Woman gave her time to managing it, by love and being 
loved. Real love it was, born of her minute knowledge of 
her children and their faith in her. Continual association 
only could produce such love and faith. 

" We have abandoned the home school and almost all its 
principles. It made men. We educate our children by the 
thousand and no longer by the one. Our learning, like 
much of our living, has been syndicated. But the men 
whom we have given to the world, who put humanity into 
their debt, were mother-taught in the little School of the 
Home. Washing-ton, Webster, Lincoln, Greeley, Mark 
Twain, Edison — all were educated in it. It was the cradle 
of American preeminence. Mother was a potent word in 
those days, strange as that may seem to children of the ris- 

1 



2 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

ing generation. We men know that any country can be 
made or unmade by its mothers." — Irving Bacheller. 

HE was sitting on the door-sill, this blue- 
eyed mite of four, his rosebud mouth 
slightly open, and his fair little brows 
slightly puckered, while his unsteady baby fingers es- 
sayed to stand a certain troublesome block on top of 
his tower. Eor half an hour he had been working, and 
the moment of triumphant result was at hand. He 
was too absorbed to hear approaching footsteps, and 
started in alarm as a quick, impatient man's voice 
sounded in his ears, "What are you making such a 
litter in the doorway for ? Into the house with you, 
Teddy. Here, let me pass, I'm in a hurry." 

And with a careless, rough sweep of his cane the 
father cast aside the pile of toys and made his way 
down town in a perfectly complacent frame of mind 
and with not the least idea of the ruin his momentary 
irritation had wrought. But oh, the pity of it! 
Where the stately tower had stood, wrought with such 
patience by those small, weak fingers, was only an 
unsightly pile of blocks. And where in the soul of the 
baby architect had been elation, hope, pride, at the 
crisis of an achievement, were grief and disappoint- 



INSPIRATION OF MOTHER LOVE 3 

ment, and something harder to bear — a dumb, vague 
resentment against the world which treated him thus 
contemptuously. 

But as he fought with two big tears a gentle arm 
came about his neck and a soft voice cooed, " What 
is the matter with my little man? The nice house 
had a tumble ? Mother will straighten things out and 
then sit here and watch Teddy build it all up again. 
Cheer up, all builders have some troubles, you know. 
Be a good sport ! " 

And in the sunshine of his mother's sympathy and 
understanding the mite feels it possible to set to work 
with fresh energy, and contentment and peace returns 
to his heart. Well for his soul that what the thought- 
less father spoils the mother's tender fingers restore. 
The thing meddled with was not simply a material 
object, capable of sustaining shocks and recovering, 
but that fragile, intangible thing which is like the iri- 
descent light playing over a prism. Break the glass 
and it is gone. Do you not recollect that day in your 
childhood when after a period of anticipation that 
seemed like years to you, the palpitating moment 
approached that was to crown the work that had cost 
many moments or hours of self-sacrificing effort, and 



4 THE MOTHER IE" EDUCATION 

some ruthless authority, knowing nothing of your 
hopes and plans, spoiled your little house of mirth? 
Perhaps only yesterday a meddlesome hand knocked 
over some one of your hopeful houses of cards. You 
know well the sting of the disappointment ; the feeling 
that the world has not appreciated you, but has, on 
the contrary, given you a cruel rebuff. So flees hap- 
piness. 

Of all the millions of little ones, busy at this hour 
with their trivial occupations, silly to adult eyes, but 
covering, if we could see beneath the surface, a mighty 
ebb and flow of human passions, how many are being 
hurt and baffled every second by some thoughtless act 
of their elders ! Yet these elders are seldom moved 
by the deliberate wish to do injury to children. They 
merely lack sympathy, and consequently, understand- 
ing. The evil they do comes from their absorption in 
what they please to term the practical, important con- 
cerns of life. Grown people are mostly in haste to 
go about their business, and they believe themselves 
justified in knocking over or scattering whatever lies 
in their path. Eathers must earn the living, and in 
their headlong rush after the nimble dollar they do not 
pause long enough to comprehend the meaning of the 



INSPIRATION OF MOTHEE LOVE 5 

dramas they catch glimpses of from time to time in 
their homes. The unfolding of the delicate buds of 
child character is a mystery they do not undertake to 
fathom. And the habit of indifference begets a cer- 
tain callousness or cynicism that is the last blow to 
confidential relations. 

I have known a very few men who had the gift of 
a maternal instinct, so that when the mother of the 
family passed away they were able to supply the place 
of a woman in the care of their children. Such men 
had very curiously, the feminine nature; and they 
were not successful in the usual pursuits that men 
undertake. But most men are of the build which 
takes to the more robust occupations of life and 
" leaves sentiment to women." At this moment a lit- 
tle scrutiny into conditions reveals that modern 
women also disdain sentiment in quite a manly fash- 
ion and consider all their duty done when they pro- 
vide for the material well-being of their offspring. 
In effect, if not in so many words, numerous mothers 
exclaim daily, " Get away, little soul, while I trim a 
dress for your little body. I like better to use a needle 
and busy myself with this pretty fancy work, which 
allows my mind to be idle, than to strain my wits try- 



6 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

ing to keep up with the race of your young intellects 
or weary myself developing your good instincts and 
checking erring tendencies. Don't make demands 
upon my attention. Let me alone ! " 

Ah, mothers, mothers, you know not what you do» 
It were better to deny yourselves the indulgence of 
pretty, easy work, and accept the great work which is 
your supreme duty on earth, and the one fraught with 
the sweetest blessing humanity knows. There is no 
other duty so exigent to a woman as that of fostering 
and protecting the happiness of a child. Through the 
making of the child's happiness she can develop within 
him the seeds of goodness more effectually than if she 
labored sternly and assiduously to correct his faults. 
The world hardens and harshens us, but deep within 
our hearts there always lives one little oasis where 
brood some memories of our childhood's happy days. 
And when the meaner impulses of our nature pull us 
down these delicate memories swing us back into the 
right path, and we are the better men and women 
because once, in the long ago, we were happy children. 

No wicked man is wholly wrong if he can look back 
once in awhile to a sweet, wholesome day in his way- 
ward life. No erring woman is lost whose eyes brim 



inspiration or mother love 7 

with tears as there rushes across her vision some scene 
in her innocent yonth when the snn shone on a brightly 
upturned little face, and dancing baby feet keeping 
time to the heart-beat of happiness. But there is not 
much hope for the regeneration of unhappy men and 
women whose childhood was barren and hard. They 
might pardon circumstances for the wreck of their 
lives, but for a miserable childhood they cannot 
pardon God. 

So it does mean something when we carelessly and 
roughly turn the bright hues of hope in a baby breast 
into the gloom of mourning. It means something 
definite and very important to his future when a lit- 
tle one murmurs into a tender ear, " Mother, I've had 
a happy day ! " 

There are no little things in life. The airy trifles 
are the mighty forces which turn the material wheels 
of our existence. Who knows at what instant we are 
changing the tenor of a human career ! A light word 
at the wrong time, a blighting sentence when tender- 
ness was needed, mockery w T hen one's little efforts 
should have been treated with seriousness, gloom when 
the mother's eye should have beamed with joy — all 
these mistakes are the spades that dig graves for 



8 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

those over whom our influence is strong, and for whose 
welfare we are responsible. 

And what wonderful things mothers have done for 
children whose trust and confidence they have never 
lost ! The artist Elaxman said that it was " his 
mother's smile at the right moment which made him 
an artist." Napoleon valued the good opinion of 
his mother more than that of any other person, and 
at the height of his glory consulted her when he re- 
fused to defer to another mortal. How many great 
statesmen and brave soldiers can look back to some in- 
cident of their childhood when a single word fitly 
spoken, an appreciative smile when the beginnings of 
ambition were stirring in infantile breasts, furnished 
the magnetism that set their ambition afire! 

We should not forget that it is emotion that supplies 
the vital force for all enterprises. Though the head 
plans the heart directs, and a child that is down- 
hearted, discouraged, at odds with the world, cannot 
make his mind work as it should. The world would 
cease to move along, even in a mechanical way, were it 
not for the push of strong feeling. Ferrier asserts 
that the springs of most of our later activities are 
drawn from early recollections of things that were 



INSPIRATION OF MOTHEE LOVE 9 

agreeable to us, or that provoked in us some strong 
desire. It is one of the peculiar privileges of a 
mother to guide her child aright through furnishing 
him with a happy environment; to bathe him from 
infancy in the glow of sympathy, to encourage him 
continually by her understanding of his immature 
but perhaps permanent ambitions, and never to ridi- 
cule his ideas, however absurd they may seem. The 
first stirring of a real desire may be an hereditary 
impulse toward a pursuit for which the child has a 
veritable talent. On the other hand, anything that 
is absolutely nonsensical will soon be out-grown ; the 
child voluntarily abandons what has no foundation 
in common experience. 

A little girl of ten years, whose forebears had been 
in several instances remarkable linguists, was seized 
with a strange ambition to invent a new tongue. 
After some secret attempts to twist the roots of her 
mother tongue to strange and unnatural usages, she 
approached her mother with the passionate declara- 
tion that if she had to give her life to the object she 
meant to invent a. new language. The mother was a 
discerning woman. Looking thoughtful, she observed 
gently, " It's a great idea. But there are a good 



10 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

many languages in the world now. I wonder if after 
all, we really need another one? However, I'll be 
glad to help you out if I can. If you get into diffi- 
culties come to me and we'll talk the matter over." 

She never had to talk the matter over. In a few 
days the child had discovered for herself the absurdity 
of her ambition. But she began to cultivate herself 
in her mother tongue, discovering a latent talent for 
languages that afterwards led her to the study of sev- 
eral foreign tongues with unusual success. The nat- 
ural taste had an eccentric outburst at the start but 
ended in a rational aspiration. 

The fact that a strong bent leading toward a useful 
pursuit may show itself in a grotesque form in in- 
fancy, should deter us from ridiculing any singular 
occupation in a child that has a real end in view. 
There may be a genius in our midst without our know- 
ing it. Often apparently dull children are the per- 
sons of gifted natures. It is not well for parents to 
believe that their geese are sure to turn out swans, 
but it is encouraging to recollect that many notable 
persons were hopelessly obtuse in their early youth. 
Daniel Webster was twice sent home from school 
as an " incorrigible dunce." Dr. Chalmers was 



INSPIRATION OF MOTHER LOVE 11 

solemnly expelled from St. Andrews for the same 
reason, and Ludwig, the famous mathematician, was 
also sent away from school after four years' struggle 
with elementary arithmetic. This is a significant re- 
flection on his teachers ! 

It is equally remarkable that the boy Chatterton — 
that " marvelous boy " — was considered a hopelessly 
dull child by his first teachers. Delmonichino, the 
artist, was dubbed by his discerning comrades " the 
ox " for his clumsy drawing, and it is said that Ho- 
garth once excited energetic derision. The question 
must suggest itself to us whether we are capable of 
pronouncing judgment upon the abilities of others, 
especially at the incipient stage of effort. It is safer 
to be lenient where we are uncertain. 

There are people who do not believe in shielding 
a child ; in making its life " too tender." But they 
forget that it takes a very robust nature to outlive 
a shock or jar that stops the flow of mental energy. 
If it were possible to protect a child altogether from 
the influence of terror and from anger we should 
probably be surprised at its increased ability for men- 
tal effort. The child who is so surrounded by benefi- 
cent influences that he stores up no miserable mem: 



12 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

ories to brood over is a thousand-fold blessed, for he 
is not hindered in his growth in intelligence. Who 
can say how much mental power one hateful memory 
can destroy ! 

In pleading for the sympathetic environment for 
the child, I by no means say that the atmosphere of 
home ought to be so soft as to be enervating. A 
mother should be able to brace her child by her coun- 
sel, uplift him by her wisdom and train him by her 
steady discipline. One of the first lessons she will 
find it well to set for him to learn is to be in earnest 
in whatever he undertakes; not to give up quickly, 
but to persevere to the end. " The thing I am most 
grateful to my mother for is that she taught me, from 
the time I can first recollect anything, to be thorough" 
observed a successful business man at an educational 
meeting. Upon looking backward many of us could 
give testimony to the importance attaching to this 
same lesson. I attribute much of a certain dogged 
patience that has carried me past some discouraging 
places, to the insistence of my father that I should 
always untie knots in strings when I was a child. I 
was never allowed to cut one with the scissors, but 
had to sit down and untangle the most intricate with 



INSPIRATION OF MOTHER LOVE 13 

my small fingers, until the untwisting of knots be- 
came with me a sort of pride, and in my life I have 
seen but one I was unable to untie ; and that was tied 
by a sailor! Not the work itself but the habit of 
thoroughness it engendered was the valuable lesson, 
and I have been glad since of the hard moments I 
spent on a stool, untying knots in rough string. 

If a child is permitted to slur over his small tasks 
and leave everything half done he will go through 
life shirking larger duties as well as small ones, and 
end by being a drag upon his family and friends. 
From the time the baby can walk alone he should be 
taught to do things for himself, and to do them well. 
Let him come to have a pride in his work. Praise 
what is well done, and merely look grave over what is 
done ill. Scolding never made a good workman. 
Make the child critical of his own tasks, and bring 
him to have a conscience in his work, so that he will 
never be contented with " Well enough." Eew men 
or women make failures of their lives who have 
learned in childhood to be thorough and in every task, 
small or large, to do their very best. 

The influence of pictures and of mottoes on a 
child just beginning to learn to read is remarkable. 



14 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

If there hangs in his room a picture with a meaning 
that relates to his own life, depicting some domestic 
scene pleasantly, as many pictures of the Dutch school 
do, he will probably never forget that particular pic- 
ture or its meaning so long as he lives. And the illu- 
minated mottoes bearing some wise but not pedanti- 
cal saying, will engrave itself in his memory, and per- 
haps be an inspiration to him throughout the years. 
Suppose the beautiful epigram of Tennyson con- 
fronts a child each day from the foot of his bed: 
" Self-knowledge, self -reverence, self-control, these 
three alone lead life to sovereign power." Could he 
help being impressed despite himself, with the sig- 
nificance of these lines, or their bearing on his indi- 
vidual life ? Or suppose him each day at breakfast, 
faced by such a home thrust as one rather popular in 
some households — " Life is only one darned thing 
after another." Will he be encouraged in well-doing 
by that ? It takes a seasoned nature to throw off the 
shadow of a pessimistic philosophy. I have been 
thankful all my life for something that hung about 
my early home ; — " Thoroughly to believe in one's 
own self, so one's own self were thorough, were to do 
great things." 



INSPIRATION OF MOTHER LOVE 15 

Our early environment, our mother's influence, 
may make or mar us, not only morally but intellectu- 
ally and practically. Ruskin was right when he said, 
" Scatter diligently in susceptible minds the germs of 
the good and beautiful. They will develop there to 
trees, bud, bloom, and bear the golden fruits of Para- 
dise." 



CHAPTEE II 

How Mothers May Help Each Other 

"A Rennaisance tutor was appointed for Gargantua; 
the first thing he did was to administer a potion to the child 
to make him forget all that he had ever learned." — 
Painter. 

THE fabled Gargantua was the model French 
boy whose entire training was faultless, after 
it was definitely taken in hand by the right 
tutors. But it appears that some poor instruction 
must have crept in during those early years when he 
bad been left to ordinary teachers, for his first real 
teacher found it necessary to throw off all their in- 
fluence — by administering a potion! There are 
many mothers who would like to have the recipe for 
that potion; who wishfully murmur, after rescuing 
their child from some injudicious advisor or com- 
panion, — " Oh, that I might someway make this child 
forget what he has just been taught by this person ! " 

16 



HOW MOTHERS HELP EACH OTHER 17 

But there is no way of doing it. A child's memory 
has a contrary way of cherishing up exactly that item 
which it is most desirable to obliterate from his mind. 
Some crass superstition imparted in secret by a 
stupid nurse, some narrow view impressed by a dull 
teacher, or a prejudice shared by a magnetic comrade 
will linger for years, perhaps for life. If it were 
possible to rear a child in a perfectly pure environ- 
ment the result might not be satisfying, because all 
action must be balanced by reaction, and a nature 
grows as much by what it fights against as by what it 
accepts. This is the comfort we may take from the 
certainty that even the best guarded child will surely 
have many things in his experience to forget — to un- 
learn. 

But the unlearning is a waste of energy that should 
be applied to other purposes. Fighting errors is good 
muscular exercise — after we recognize them as er- 
rors. But if a belief gets a real hold upon a young 
mind, and other ideas grow up, founded upon that, 
scarcely anything is more difficult than to replace all 
this material of thinking by another and contrary 
kind. 

It has not yet been recognized that a great deal of 



18 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

the early training of the child mind is farcical non- 
sense; a narrowing of his intelligence, a stupefying 
of his natural humanity. He gets the way of " hating 
this " and of " loving that," of hending down to arti- 
ficial rules and rulers, and of hiding his honest senti- 
ments for fear that they may be incorrect. His im- 
mediate and near-by associates are of course, his uni- 
verse, and their opinions form his own. And of the 
stuff poured into his brain in the very earliest years 
will have to be made that ultimate belief about life 
which will sensibly influence his conduct to the end 
of his days. Who, for instance, can ever completely 
out-grow certain little fancies about the moon and 
stars, the clouds and mountains that were related to 
him when he was just beginning to ask questions about 
these natural mysteries ? It would be a wonderfully 
interesting thing to trace throughout both the ignorant 
and the enlightened parts of the world the effect of 
such a tale as the almost universal myth of the " Pot 
of gold at the end of the rainbow ! " 

That is not in itself a harmful fancy, but it merely 
goes to show the tenacity of an idea sown on the 
plastic soil of infancy. Given then, the fact that 
early teaching is exceedingly important, in what prac- 



HOW MOTHERS HELP EACH OTHER 19 

tical way may a mother, having duties to herself, to 
the rest of her family, and to the world in general, eke 
out her limited resources and arrange for her child 
such an environment as may minister at all times to 
his best interests? 

There is a wealth of material lying all about us, an- 
swering to every one of our needs ; but we are usually 
too conservative and timid to appropriate it. The 
conservatism of the average mother is remarkable. 
She is really influenced very little by her knowledge 
and almost entirely guided by her inherited habits. 
That astute observer, Theodore Drieser, asserts that 
it is seldom principle, but usually habit that regulates 
all our minor acts. It is certain that a woman de- 
parts with the utmost reluctance from the beaten path 
in matters relating to her children, because she has to 
overcome such an amount of hereditary inertia that 
the effort is a kind of moral revolution. 

Yet at the present moment women believe them- 
selves thoroughly progressive. They have mothers' 
clubs in immense numbers, read radical papers on 
every theme, glow with enthusiasm on the subject of 
the new education — and go home to the same old 
grind of duties unrelieved by any of those new 



20 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION" 

methods that might bring joy and peace to a fretted 
household. 

At a mothers' meeting which, recently took place in 
a lively town, one bright woman rose at the end of 
some suggestive speech and asked plaintively, " I 
should like to know whether, after we have performed 
our motherly duties according to this advice, there will 
be any scraps of time left over for anything else ? " 
And no one could answer her. How little women be- 
lieve in co-operation! How reluctant they are to 
frankly avow a need and seek the aid required from 
one another! It takes a courageous as well as an 
original woman to strike out in a new path and try 
new ways. Any woman with common sense and firm 
will can do her sex a great service by merely carrying- 
out some single good idea that occurs to her about 
the training of her child. A single innovation may 
carry light afar and spread around from a neighbor- 
hood to a foreign land. And how much she will ef- 
fect for her own children ! The most inexorable hard- 
ship of childhood is the inelasticity of home training. 
School teachers constantly introduce changes into their 
methods but parents obstinately keep to their old 
ways, so making home life contrast unfavorably with 



HOW MOTHERS HELP EACH OTHER 21 

the outer world. Yet the tone of a home should be 
lively and refreshing. But it cannot be so unless the 
mother is magnetic. 

It is favorable to any change a mother may intro- 
duce that children eagerly welcome novelty. Young 
creatures suffer so much from monotony that even 
a change for the worse has its compensations. If 
they are to be bruised they prefer a new spot. But 
on the other side, it is better to build our plans upon 
a foundation that has been tested and rendered fa- 
miliar, because children love persons and places they 
already know, and are apt to become terrified when 
confronted intimately with circumstances and per- 
sons they have never before met. 

This the wise mother will take into account. 
When she is laying plans to get more time to read or 
to go out with her husband, without neglecting her 
little tots, she will not hastily turn them over to a 
strange nurse, nor send them to school to get rid of 
them. Above all, if she has a particle of foresight, 
and realizes the vital harm done to young nerves by 
too early contact with the bustle of the outer world 
especially in great cities, she will not take her young 
child downtown with her shopping, or to noisy shows, 



22 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

or to nocturnal amusements of any sort whatsoever. 
The sight of a small child enduring agony at a moving 
picture show at eleven o'clock at night, being aroused 
from stupor to go into the keen night air with his 
nerves in a state of frenzy, is enough to make a sane 
person weep. Happily, the spectacle is less common 
than it used to be. Our grandparents in New Eng- 
land were required by law to attend meeting, and no 
adult might remain at home to care for a child old 
enough to go with its parents. This discreet age was 
fixed at so tender a period that the infants in arms 
were not exempt. But how great the difference be- 
tween those somnorific old meeting houses and our 
modern bedlams of electric motion plays or terrifying 
business streets ! No law now requires that a child 
shall accompany its parents anywhere. He may be 
left to cry alone or to roam the streets by himself, if 
it is so decreed by his autocrats. 

There is another way. Lacking grandmother or 
kind aunt, and if there is not a trained attendant with 
at least a smattering of lore of the nature of kinder- 
gartens, mothers may supplement one another; may 
loan out their time and energies for mutual advantage, 
and by a judicious selection among themselves ac- 



HOW MOTHERS HELP EACH OTHER 23 

complisli something like a miracle for their children. 
Would it not. be an excellent thing if our child could 
spend a portion of his time each day with an expert 
instructor in some special branch of knowledge, or 
some adept in an art or piece of practical lore ? It is 
practical, this ideal system. I have seen it tried, and 
with success. 

In a certain select kindergarten in New York there 
were two small pupils who formed an exception to 
the rest of the class, inasmuch as they were looked 
after with more than ordinary zeal. Upon one side 
of the great sunny room left for visitors there fre- 
quently appeared the mothers of these two little 
maidens, and their motions were watched unobtru- 
sively, silently, with loving, intelligent eyes. Both 
mothers were gentlewomen, and the able teacher 
needed no suggestions. But their interest in the edu- 
cational method in process was so active that they were 
impelled to try to understand it. Consequently, they 
were enabled to help the little ones materially, by 
their companionship at home. 

These two mothers were strangers to each other, 
and of all places in the world, Gotham is the hardest 
for women to break the social ice ; but their common 



24 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

interest in childhood drew them irresistibly together, 
and gradually they formed an acquaintance that was 
more than ordinarily congenial. Both their little 
girls, being only children in each instance, were de- 
lighted to visit at each other's houses and found recrea- 
tion in occasionally breathing in the atmosphere of a 
home different from, yet not opposing, their own. 
Presently a third acquaintance in the person of the 
earnest, thoughtful stepmother of a nice little daugh- 
ter, became admitted to the friendship of this small 
circle, and the three homes became alternate camp- 
ing grounds for the youthful coterie* 

Then it occurred to one of these women that on 
the afternoons that these little ones romped together 
it was not necessary for three adults to sit idly talk- 
ing, to pass the time. There is too much to do in 
the world nowadays for nine adults to accompany one 
small child to the circus, as happened sometimes in 
old-fashioned rural districts. One watcher seemed to 
this more resourceful woman sufficient. The others 
might occupy their time more profitably. So she pro- 
posed to her friends to form a mutual benefit guild. 
The arrangement was that the children should spend 
alternate afternoons in company, and the mother who 



HOW MOTHERS HELP EACH OTHEE 25 

was hostess for that day should take entire charge of 
the three little girls, leaving the other two mothers 
absolutely free to pursue their own plans from 
luncheon to bedtime. None of the women employed 
a nurse. They were all three devoted, conscientious 
mothers and would never have brought their minds 
to a state of contentment with any arrangement that 
was not best for their children. But here was an 
opportunity to give the little ones pleasant social in- 
tercourse and themselves long desired leisure to spend 
in intellectual enjoyments. So they eagerly embraced 
the chance. The little ones, already friends, were 
happy, and the mothers equally pleased. 

Now out of this original device grew something 
much greater. Most discoveries are accidental, and 
this one was not an exception. It happened that all 
three of these women were specially gifted. One 
was a fine artist, another an accomplished musician, 
and the third an exquisite, scientific household man- 
ager. When their children's year of kindergarten 
training was accomplished and they were asking 
themselves with anxiety, what was to come next, in 
that dreary hiatus between kindergarten and school 
their consultation resulted in another idea. There 



26 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

are in some advanced schools what are called " con- 
necting classes/' undertaking to provide for children 
until it is time for them to enter into routine work. 
" Suppose we do better than this/' suggested one of 
the friends ; " suppose we become mutual helpers in 
education \ " 

It was an idea to give pause. Not one of them 
particularly liked formal teaching, and two were 
averse to entering upon such a responsibility as 
the suggestion appeared to imply. Yet upon weigh- 
ing all the advantages against the slight inconvenience 
of putting their rusting talents to active use, they were 
impelled to try the plan. It was not called, but was 
actually, in miniature, a neighborhood tutoring school, 
and of the rarest character, because the mercenary ele- 
ment was absent and the instructors were actuated by 
the spirit of doing exactly as they were done by. 
The arrangement was for one mother to take charge 
of the three little girls two days in each week, and 
give them lessons in housekeeping. With the gas 
range and grown-up paraphernalia it was doll house- 
keeping, glorified. What meals were prepared, what 
scientific house-cleanings for the doll's family accom- 



HOW MOTHERS HELP EACH OTHER 27 

plished, what lessons learned in the art of caring for 
habies and of what to do in emergencies! And all 
without pedagogic stiffness or enforced work. " No 
fear of homes dying out among us if the honest pref- 
erences of children are considered, " observed the su- 
pervisor of these domestic lessons. " The baby heart 
is an honest, simple heart and will turn readily 
to the homely things of life if its attention is secured 
once. And it is to the wholesome, unspoiled baby 
nature that we must direct our efforts in domestic 
education. If ever lessons in household science can 
be given without pain and with bursts of glee it is 
with a doll's house for a background, and docile tots 
for learners, to whom the whole matter is almost play, 
but who work at it with the zeal that children throw 
into everything that really interests them. Do you 
know that a child absolutely likes work, if it is con- 
vinced that it is the same kind of work that grown 
people are doing \ That is the secret ; to make them 
participators of our own occupations. And the way to 
do it is first, to enter into theirs." 

After a morning so spent, the afternoon was given 
to outdoor recreations, sometimes in the great city 



28 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

play-ground, Central Park, oftener after a trolley 
ride that brought the troupe to the real country, where 
there was no " grass to keep off." 

The second mother had undertaken the task of 
teaching her three charges the rudiments of music, hut 
she made her lessons short if important and her play 
spells correspondingly longer. The vital point was 
that she conscientiously imparted during her brief 
half hour lesson something that was always remem- 
bered by the children, because there was the element 
of eternal truth in her excellent science. They were 
henceforth fortified against shallow, false music, and 
that is the most valuable thing about the divine art 
that can be learned in early life. 

To the third mother had fallen the duty of super- 
vising the three young persons in clay modeling and 
drawing. Of the first, she made an active pleasure, 
providing white clay on broad boards in the big 
kitchen, and skilfully turning the apparently spon- 
taneous work of the trio to good account in molding 
fruits and every other conceivable object that might 
be imitated, and afterward, making crude but quite 
reasonable drawings of these self-constructed models. 
She learned the truth of what she had suspected, that 



HOW MOTHERS HELP EACH OTIIEE 29 

a child prefers to do the whole thing, and carry out 
in its completeness every idea he has a glimmering 
about, rather than to cooperate with a superior intel- 
ligence in something he believes his own. In other 
words, he is deeply interested when he supposes him- 
self to be both designer and workman. An apple 
molded from clay and then copied in charcoal is a 
product of his own; it belongs to him, and after it 
is all done, he could eat it, from very joy of owner- 
ship ! 

The arrangement described here had the rare ad- 
vantage of securing a group of specialists for each 
child, such as the most expensive private school could 
not excel, and this without any expense at all. Why 
should it not be adopted by other mothers of small 
families where the children crave companionship and 
change and they themselves crave leisure ? Leaving 
out the item of special talent for art, there can be 
a very useful exchange made of other aptitudes 
among women. Every woman can do some little 
thing well. Let her teach her friend's child that 
thing in exchange for another sort of guardianship. 
Let us have less formality and more humanity among 
us! 



30 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

There are two ways of rearing children — the one, 
to leave them in infancy to nurses, and later on, to 
teachers: the other, to supervise every step of their 
development from birth to maturity. Eor the mother 
who elects to do her duty there seems nothing possi- 
ble but unremitting attention to maternal cares and 
consequent neglect of all other modes of usefulness. 
Under present conditions. But why in the world 
should any sort of absurd conditions hold, when an 
improvement is within our reach? Women are no- 
toriously timid about introducing improvements into 
their way of living, a fact that entitles them to be 
called the " invariable element " in nature, while men 
are the originating element, consequently, variable. 
There was a time when men distrusted any departure 
from conventionality in the women of their house- 
holds, and frowned down new ideas. But they are 
no longer doing it. They may be surprised when wife 
and mother devises some new and good thing, but they 
are delighted also. Perhaps they suspect that the 
germ of the bit of originality was in some occult way, 
niched from their own brains while they slept, and 
congratulate themselves in their sly power! Be that 
as it may, we have fallen into a bad habit of apathy 



HOW MOTHERS HELP EACH OTHEE 31 

in this matter of child-training versus self-develop- 
ment, and need to look over the ground and see what 
we can do towards reform. The woman who neglects 
her home while she teaches the world how to think, 
legislate and act is not admirable in any aspect. 
" Mother is so busy in her educational work now that 
she is scarcely ever at home/' announced a young high- 
school girl with innocent pride. The listener could 
only appreciate the humor of it without betraying 
sympathy. 

Every experiment that helps to solve this problem 
of how to do justice to the rising generation without 
doing injustice to the retiring one, is of value. If 
" Youth will be served " then age must not be en- 
slaved. The only way is to make of duty a joy and 
a release. Co-operation between parents is a key to 
the situation, and when the froth of talk about im- 
possible methods of " child-training " niters down to 
practical meaning, it must occur to every sensible 
mother that to take advantage of the fact that many 
people want the same thing that she wants should be 
an inspiration to the right end. 

Suppose that among a group of friends in a com- 
munity there are three or four mothers with similar 



32 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

ideals and almost equal capacities, inexperienced per- 
haps, in formal teaching, but possessing average edu- 
cation and therefore, ability to make time passed in 
their society useful and agreeable to the young. Well, 
instead of these women each devoting herself singly 
to the care of her separate offspring, and wearing 
nerve and spirit to atoms by the drudgery of an un- 
varying routine, it would be an immense relief and 
refreshment to themselves and their children, if they 
should exchange motherhood either regularly or at 
intervals. Leaving out the question of specific in- 
struction, the society of a refined and educated mother 
is far more beneficial for the young child than that 
of either nurse or ordinary person. The feeling that 
she is doing a co-operative service, that as she is serv- 
ing so she will be served, must be a stimulant to pro- 
duce good results. Happy that child who has the 
advantage of such a community league ! And happy 
must be that mother who realizes that in effecting a 
boon for herself she has also secured a wholesome 
and agreeable diversion for the home-bred child. He 
is safe-guarded and ministered to as he could not be 
in any other environment than a good home. 



CHAPTER III 

The Bikth of Faculty 

" Our start must be taken from a careful training of the 
senses in perception." — Ladd. 

BACK of all our education stand our five 
senses. Upon them we depend for acquaint- 
ance with our environment, for the develop- 
ment of our intellect, and for the tone of our char- 
acter. It is of the first importance that at his entrance 
into the world a child should be shielded from all 
shocks that might work injury to his delicate organs. 
It will make an enormous difference to him all 
through life if a single sense organ becomes injured ; 
if it is even slightly incapacitated, so that the in- 
formation he is meant to receive through that one 
source will not be received. Every one realizes, when 
the matter is distinctly put to them, that a person 
whose hearing, sight or sense of smell is less powerful 
than it normally should be, is handicapped. He must 

33 



34 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

work harder than a completely normal individual 
does, to get the same results, and he may never ac- 
complish what he might under better conditions. 
Certainly, in order to make up a deficiency in one 
sense, his other senses will be required to do over- 
work, and are, consequently, likely to give out sooner 
than they should do. But unhappily, as our senses 
are not imperative in their demands upon public 
attention, like our features and legs, they are less 
likely to be considered important, so long as they are 
unobtrusive. 

The child who is born deformed is from the first 
instant, comprehended and aided by science. 
Crooked noses are straightened, twisted limbs care- 
fully attended to. Such defects stand out at once, 
and receive the treatment they demand. But a de- 
fective organ is not able to make an immediate ap- 
peal to sympathy. In the first place, the period when 
each sense normally comes to its powers varies with 
children. There is a standard, but comparatively 
few persons know or, at least, recollect it. It is, how- 
ever, very important that a mother keep in mind 
several facts that bear upon the permanent welfare 
of her child in this connection. 



THE BIRTH OF FACULTY 35 

The first sense to develop is tliat of taste. A baby 
distinguishes generally, when a few hours old, between 
sweet and sour, and prefers the former. As the 
taking of nourishment is his first need, it is quite 
natural that his earliest intelligent act should be to 
choose the sort of nourishment in accord with his 
preference! But occasionally, the child does not 
make such a distinction until he has been in this 
world for several days. His ability to do so should 
not be unduly delayed, and a mother ought to note 
whether the tiny newcomer is properly equipped with 
this gustatory sense, by offering him. at least on the 
second day, both a sweetened and a bitter suck at 
something, that his subsequent remarks upon the 
matter may be observed. They will be, of course, 
merely facial expressions ! 

The second sense in order of development is that 
of smell. To learn whether this sense organ is nor- 
mal the baby may be approached by his nurse with a 
bottle of strong smelling salts. The wrinkling of his 
nose, or absolute indifference, is significant of his 
power to distinguish odors. But possibly, and not 
from any fault of his organs, he may confuse smell 
with taste, and try to suck the thing held to his nose. 



36 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

Babies have been known to suck at flowers, liking 
their fragrance. Several experiments, made at in- 
tervals, can establish the point beyond dispute. 

The third sense, the cutaneous, or sense of touch, 
comes more slowly. Some children suffer immedi- 
ately from an excess of cold or heat, but very few 
indeed, are able to show their discomfort, so it is 
generally assumed that unless the appeal made is 
strong, they are indifferent to changes of tempera- 
ture at first. But this mental indifference must not 
make us oblivious to the fact that their physical wel- 
fare is greatly affected by climatic changes. Warmth 
is their native element, and they should not be al- 
lowed to be cold, under any circumstances. This is, 
accurately speaking, the cutaneous sense, not touch. 

Preyer, whose observations upon this subject are en- 
titled to great respect, asserts that every child is born 
completely deaf. Yet I have known at least two ex- 
ceptions. Usually, though, his remark holds true. 
Sometimes hearing does not develop until several days 
elapse; but in the case of a child of intelligent and 
mentally active parents, and particularly, when the 
parents are musically inclined, it is not rare for hear- 
ing to show itself as soon as the second day. Eor- 



THE BIRTH OF FACULTY 37 

tunately, the new-born infant hears with difficulty 
at first ; otherwise, he would be dreadfully disturbed 
by the noisy world into which he has entered. A 
careful mother will try to have the young baby kept 
as quiet as possible; safe-guarded from abrupt, loud 
voices and from all jarring sounds. His nerves will 
benefit much by this care. 

Children, like kittens, are born without capacity 
to see at all. The pretty, open eyes are sightless. 
But after a few days they distinguish between light 
and darkness, then, by degrees, between large objects. 
But this power of vision varies even more than it 
does in the other senses. Sensibility to strong light is 
certainly present when the sight is normal. The 
baby is unpleasantly affected by powerful illumina- 
tion and ought to be guarded from a glare, either of 
sunshine or artificial light. The dawn of life has its 
natural accompaniment of soft and gentle glow of 
light. 

Kow it is evident that the children of parents who 
are fortunately so situated that they are able to give 
their children from the very first, all the care and at- 
tention, all the scientific training that may be secured 
by consultation with excellent physicians and that 



38 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION" 

conduces so greatly to their welfare, start them off in 
life with infinitely better chances than can parents 
who are able to do much less. Infinite are the sense 
maladies of the children of the poor ! But by special 
care in the early days of a child's life a mother may 
confer upon him the rare boon of healthy sense 
organs, unless there is present from the beginning a 
defect or weakness ; and in that case timely attention 
may remedy the trouble. 

With the physical organs in good working order, 
the next thing is the training of the sense perceptions. 
Of what use is a superior capacity which is permitted 
to lie dormant, until chance awakens it? The dif- 
ference between the ill-cared for child and the shielded 
one is quickly manifest in the degree of attention that 
is given to his sensations, those mental accompani- 
ments of his perceptive organs that he expresses in the 
language of cries or cooes of pleasure. Out of sensa- 
tions comes all our moral life. It is a tremendous 
thought. Hunger unappeased will bring about crime 
in the adult, in the child, revolt against conditions to 
the extent of embittered disposition and permanent ill- 
temper. Eear, the next sensation to develop, too early 
or too profoundly aroused, may make a coward or 



THE BIRTH OF FACULTY 39 

a sneak of a timid nature. Rightly managed it is a 
force in education that has a distinct value. But it is 
more abused than any other sensation of childhood. 

Some renowned authors have written feelingly of 
" the bugaboos of childhood " ; those phantoms of the 
imagination that were aroused by tales of ignorant 
nurses or vicious comrades, or even, unhappily, by 
thoughtless parents, too deficient in imagination them- 
selves to apprehend the results of terror upon more 
sensitive natures. As we understand the strength of 
this sensation, the earliest to awaken, the last to die 
in a human being, we must be moved to treat it with 
extreme caution, and shield our child from any frights 
that might seriously interfere with his mental de- 
velopment. A severe terror in infancy has been 
known to bring on convulsions, lasting for years. 
Many unaccountable mental deficiencies might be 
traced to such a source, many eccentricities explained 
by the same experience. We cannot estimate the 
harm which may arise from one fit of terror, or even 
from one abnormal idea of fear that gets root in the 
nature of a young child. 

How profoundly is the child at the mercy of his 
guardians ! There is, indeed, one salutary check upon 



40 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

their powers. The child belongs not only to his par- 
ents but to his species, his race, his entire family. 
Heredity has molded him. The efforts of kindly 
or careless hands can beautify or mar, but cannot 
change his form. We should not over-estimate the 
effects of education. Every family, every institution, 
can show children subjected to the same kind of train- 
ing who have grown into beings as utterly dissimilar 
as if they were the products of different nurtures. 
When we begin to divine the true nature of the little 
being who seems so receptive we can aid him in the 
development of that special character which is to mark 
him out as a separate atom from the great troupe of 
his generation. And to watch for indications of this 
individuality and seize upon them as foundations of 
our best work is something we must constantly bear 
in mind. 

But happily for us education is a synthetic process. 
The general should, in the true order, come before 
the particular. Science has done so much for us in 
the way of giving us rules, that we need only to apply 
them. It would be unfortunate indeed, if each parent 
were obliged to repeat personally, all the experiments 
that scientists have practised upon their offspring for 



THE BIETH OF FACULTY 41 

the benefit of the world ! When Mr. Preyer hurried 
his five-minutes-old son to the window to note the 
effect of light upon him, when Malebrance tried the 
effects of heat and cold upon a tiny stranger and Dar- 
win that of sounds, the good result followed of giving 
the world some reliable facts about infant develop- 
ment upon which may be founded a practical psy- 
chology. Those infant pioneers suffered in a good 
cause. But now we may profit by all these experi- 
ments, without subjecting our own little ones to end- 
less trials. 

One thing that is generally admitted is that each 
child passes swiftly through the general phases of 
racial development; that he is at first more animal 
than human, later on, chiefly savage, and gradually 
takes on the nature of his species and his family. 
But one thing must be noted; all the work done by 
man for his own mental and moral benefit has borne 
results. The infant of the twentieth century, coming 
of an average good family, is not so much a little sav- 
age as the offspring of the gipsy or Esquimo. Tradi- 
tions of gentleness and high aspirations have passed 
into his blood. He is " the heir of the ages " and 
begins where his predecessors have left off. And the 



42 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

child of a modern cultured family is not either on ex- 
actly the same level as the hereditary tramp or the 
day laborer. He has an advantage over them. Our 
little one has gained through the culture of his pa- 
rents and grandparents a predisposition toward cer- 
tain pursuits and acts which enables him to leap at a 
bound over experiences that less advanced natures 
must slowly fight their way through. But an over- 
worked field becomes barren. And a family that has 
persisted for generations in one sort of work uses up, 
finally, all the energy that is in store of the kind 
needed for that kind of work; then degeneration sets 
in. Perhaps this is why pursuits that demand hard 
brain labor, like music, literature and science, are 
seldom adopted by many successive generations, but 
are avoided for a time, and then taken up again. 

The child of good family will naturally be possessed 
of finer sense perceptions than those of ignorant par- 
entage. Something more is contained in this expres- 
sion than the mere ordinary use of the senses. The 
woodsman, constantly on the alert for sounds, proba- 
bly passes to his offspring a keenness of hearing that 
is of the greatest advantage to him in the ordinary 
affairs of life. But if he turned out of his way to 



THE BIRTH OF FACULTY 43 

enter upon the study of music, he would not find that 
his keen hearing gave him any better apprehension 
of harmony. The feeling for melody is a distinct 
thing; a higher development of the sense perception. 
It is the natural heritage of the musician's child, sur- 
rounded from the first by an atmosphere of music. 
To him possessed only of the outer sense organ, with- 
out the inner accompaniment of sensibility, there can 
be no understanding of delicate shades of meaning. 
Sensibility, then, is one of the attributes of faculty. 
It should not be confused with abnormal sensitiveness, 
which comes from diseased nerves. It is, in other 
words, the power to discriminate readily, to detect 
differences. 

This power should be assiduously cultivated in the 
small child. Of course a very nice judgment is neces- 
sary in giving to the awakening intelligence of a mere 
baby just sufficient stuff to occupy his healthy desire 
for activity, and not enough to weary his feeble brain. 
He must be watched, and the instant he shows signs 
of fatigue, must rest. Perhaps it is best that no 
actual effort be made to arouse his attention until he 
shows an interest in his surroundings. Children dif- 
fer materially in this respect, Some infants of three 



44 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

months are restless without a kind of mental occupa- 
tion from time to time. A wandering gaze about 
their rooms, a faint endeavor to lay hold of some 
object near them, a wish to be amused indicates that 
advanced state of impatience which characterizes the 
offspring of very active parents, in this progressive 
age. Whether this sign of interest in the outside 
world comes at three months, at six, or later, let the 
parent beware of entering upon silly or exciting pas- 
times to quiet the child. If his mind is awakening, 
then let him have something to satisfy his mind ; not 
be jerked about on a physical pivot. Nurses imagine 
that a restless infant must be moved about ; must have 
his body wearied that his nerves may be quieted. 
Try, instead, hanging three bright downy balls over 
the baby's crib; one yellow, one red and the other 
blue. Let them dangle there for some little time. 
Then, name them to him. Touch first one, then the 
others, as they are named. Presently, get the baby 
to pick them out himself. It may take weeks before 
he can do it. If it should take three months, do not 
be discouraged. Swing the balls softly about so that 
he may get an idea of motion without noise. It is a 
great advantage in education to separate impressions, 



THE BIETH OF FACULTY 45 

mating them single instead of complex. It is not 
generally known that most babies get an untrue im- 
pression about noise, associating it with rapid move- 
ment, so that they become frightened sometimes from 
sounds that they suppose capable of enveloping them 
bodily. 

The first year of a baby's life must be given over 
chiefly to his physical functions ; yet, his mental train- 
ing cannot be left altogether out of the question. 
Without any urging, he will usually show signs of 
wanting something beside " bread, cheese and kisses " ; 
something for his mind to wrestle with. At this 
early period, and for a long time to come, his train- 
ing must be entirely through associations. Let cer- 
tain acts that are pleasant to him, such as giving him 
nourishment, be associated with certain other states 
that should be emotionally agreeable. It has seldom 
been thought of, but is an excellent thing to do, to 
have a music box in the nursery to play soothing 
melodies, and set it in motion about meal time. If 
you want your baby to develop a taste for music, then 
try this! 

One of the first things to find out is whether your 
child has begun to seek for the whys and wherefores 



46 THE MOTHER W EDUCATION 

of happenings. When he throws his bottle on the 
floor and looks with interest at the broken glass and 
spilled milk, do not accuse him of naughtiness; at 
least, unless he shows signs of temper. If he has 
merely a casual interest in the occurrence, as any 
philosopher would have in an experiment, can you 
not afford a few broken bottles to satisfy his mind ? 
But when he discovers that his dinner has gone along 
with the bottle, it may be well to explain to him that 
he will have to wait awhile until another bottle can 
be found. If simple words are employed, accom- 
panied by appropriate gestures, a very young baby can 
understand many events that relate to his comfort. 

Making a tinkling noise with a spoon against his 
plate is one of the early pastimes of the baby who 
begins to sit up in his high chair. If there is some 
one at hand to explain something about these things 
to him, saying and showing by example, how such 
sounds are produced, he will quickly apprehend some 
very significant facts. The best boon of infancy is 
an observant mother, ready to note, listen, and aid 
her small child in all the experimentings he makes 
with his limited world material. 

One of the mistakes made is careless establishment 



THE BIRTH OF FACULTY 47 

of associations. At first, only things that have un- 
varying relations with each other, snch as a watch 
with its ticking sonnd, a ball with its tendency to 
whirl, a bell with its noisy clapper, and other cer- 
tainties in circumstances, should be brought to the 
attention of the child. I should rather say, that 
nothing at all must be brought to his attention; let 
him attend to what pleases him ; then be ready to show 
him the inner meaning of what he has fastened upon. 
A mother's voice is naturally pleasant to the baby. 
He will listen to it and attend to it, especially if she 
takes pains to modulate it agreeably, and in this 
preference of the child resides a meaning that she 
should not neglect. Tone color, differences of pitch, 
and qualities in voice, might be made one of the 
earliest modes of mental and moral training of in- 
fancy, if parents were careful and intelligent in the 
use of this power. Long before words are compre- 
hended tones interest the mind of the child. The par- 
ent who knows how to employ what is called the " di- 
dactic " tone, or that of mild authority, will have little 
trouble about making his reasonable commands obeyed. 
The mother with the sympathetic cadence developed 
in her voice may win her little one's heart confidences 



48 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

without any effort. While she who is gifted with the 
sprightly, joyous quality has the natural superiority 
of the leader, and has only to choose the path she wills 
to pursue to he followed blindly or at least, happily, 
which is better. 

A droning voice is sometimes restful but oftener 
irritating to an intelligent child. The voice full 
of inflections helps him to understand language. 
Animals talk by inflections ; the small child tends to 
use them continually. This is why his little voice 
constantly runs up to sky-high pitches. Let a mother 
be wise to this fact, and rather consider a high pitch 
a sign of nervous energy than of nervous irritability. 



CHAPTER IV 

Through Play to Work 

"To elicit interested attention in the right objects and 
actions is the principal problem in the culture of infantile 
life." — Ladd. 

IN regard to the training of children we are not 
so much in need of new knowledge as of the 
disposition to apply what we already know. 
For even the ordinary old nurse, who has cared for 
many little ones in her day, will have learned facts 
that inevitably lead her to the right conclusions. 
Take the instance of her laying stress upon the date 
her little charge begins " to take notice." Greatly 
as this period differs among infants, according as 
their senses are more or less developed and their 
muscular systems strong or weak, it is a landmark 
in their lives. Prom the instant they begin to recog- 
nize the objects that surround them they become 
individuals. Por capacity to " take notice " is the 



50 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

first sign of mental power. It is inherent and where 
it is altogether lacking we may be sure that there 
is some organic defect calling for skilful remedial 
medical treatment. 

As noted in the last chapter, one of the first things 
to attract the child's notice is usually his mother's 
voice, especially as he associates it with being taken 
up and fed. Then musical sounds begin to affect 
him. Let all efforts to please him in this matter be 
of very short duration. It may be hard for the baby 
to check an inhibition toward fixity of attention if it 
is too vivid. That will end in emotional excitement. 
Every one knows that a child whose attention has 
been overstrained becomes fretful. 

It is a singularly stupid mistake to begin the educa- 
tion of the child by a series of negations. The de- 
terring force constantly applied will dull the bright- 
est wits. Instead, the beginning should be positive. 
The little one of a year old seeks some active way of 
putting his fresh knowledge about an associated pair 
of acts in operation; let him have his chance. He* 
finds that by pulling on a certain knob he can open a 
drawer. How absurd it is to immediately make of 
that act a means of moral training by saying, " No, 



THROUGH PLAY TO WORK 51 

no, baby mustn't do that ! " Or he wants to tear up 
paper and scatter it on the floor. There is no harm 
in it. But after a sufficient amount of paper has been 
scattered to satisfy him he may be gently taught to 
pick it all up. That is relating construction with the 
natural propensity of destruction and teaching a 
valuable lesson. 

Sometimes we forget that ideas of conduct are not 
inherent; that there is no good or bad in the small 
child's vocabulary, and that these words mean no more 
to him than yellow or blue. If only we could divine 
the workings of infant intellects more accurately, we 
should possibly hear some tiny tot saying to itself — 
' What do these grown folks mean by not letting me 
learn things the way I can learn them ? " One day 
a mite of two years, perched on her father's knee, 
reached over to handle an object on his desk, which 
he detached gently from her hand, saying, " That is 
one of the things Dot must not touch." Picking up 
something else, she obseiwed calmly, " That's two of 
them." She had not begun to apprehend any moral 
relation between acts and wants. And her parent 
was wise enough not to enforce it at the time. 

The best means of arousing interest in an occupa- 



52 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

tion is just to suggest something to be done, repeat- 
ing the same suggestion at intervals, until in the track- 
less waste of the infant's brain a channel is worn 
along which impressions may easily proceed. Gradu- 
ally and cautiously we may hold the child's attention 
for longer and longer periods, observing the effect 
upon him and gently encouraging him in those efforts 
toward self-control which must be very often renewed 
before he attains the power to concentrate his mind 
upon whatever he undertakes. 

This, which is the greatest of intellectual feats, is 
the basis of all his future education and development. 
To be able to attend with all one's mind to the thing 
that is present, to put aside other and contradictory 
emotions or ideas and concentrate entirely on a single 
one is an achievement for an adult. How much 
greater an achievement for a little child! His act 
of attention means that he has selected, out of the 
different things that engage his wandering senses, 
something whose claim is stronger than those of other 
matters. But he is incapable of making any such 
selection. Chance, or suggestion from outside de- 
cide for Tiim. But if the suggestion is feeble it holds 
him for a very short time; then his mind wanders 



THROUGH PLAY TO WORK 53 

again. How are we to aid him to fix his atten- 
tion? 

The element of surprise is of the greatest value. 
A small shock, not sharp enough to be uncomfortable, 
but distinct enough to cause an immediate separation 
from more passive impressions, arouses the child's 
mind to activity in the direction desired. Here we 
see the truth of the new view of education when it 
declares that " interest is the life of teaching." Un- 
less an interest can be created there is no real at- 
tention, but merely its deceitful counterfeit. There 
is a great deal of talk at this moment about the neces- 
sity of " a thrill " in stories to make them interest- 
ing to adults. We must have " shockers " even if 
they are also masterpieces. Indeed, nothing is ad- 
mitted to be a masterpiece now that has not in it this 
" thrill." Carrying out the hint we may say that 
a child instinctively demands " the thrill " in his 
story. He too, wants to be made to wonder, to laugh 
and to weep. Why not ? The world is a vast won- 
der-house to the new-comer and all full of marvels. 
May he not have the pleasure of dwelling upon their 
singular features for a space, before being made to 
linger wearisomely on the less interesting ones ? 



54 THE MOTHER m EDUCATION 

Now, what is most likely to strike the little child 
as an unique, startling fancy % He has no conception 
of the grotesque yet, or of the awful, excepting as 
he is able to compare a new thing with his few im- 
pressions of the normal. Eor instance, being habitu- 
ated to seeing his mother's face in certain relations 
with her dress he is amused upon her assuming an 
absurd head-dress, like a paper cap. His father with 
a toy balanced on his dignified head is a comical 
sight. He clamors for repetitions of such absurdities. 
It is because the contrast with his ordinary experi- 
ences is very marked that his entertainment is made 
out of it. If his mother had always worn a paper 
cap or his father a toy horse on his hair, do you 
suppose master Charles, at three, would find such 
an exhibition funny? Again, having had a few 
years' experience of quiet country life, we will say, 
and being suddenly changed to the city, the contrast 
strikes him with astonishment, and in every new 
aspect of familiar objects he sees fresh reason for 
wonder. It is the start given to his perceptive facul- 
ties that sets them into activity. 

Upon this hint, that some kind of radical departure 
from the habitual is the best way of getting the child's 



THKOUGH PLAY TO WORK 55 

attention, we may base our efforts to secure his pref- 
erence for the object in which we wish to enlist his 
interest. Start out with some novel feature in your 
little piece of work. If you wish the little one to 
learn to build with blocks, do not go on in a slow, 
unmeaning way, methodically planning to get some 
result about which he knows and cares nothing. But 
strike at once to the heart of the matter. Say, per- 
haps, " Look at your little donkey, dear, he has no 
home to go to and he is tired. See how his head 
droops. Let's make him a house. What sort of one 
does he like ? Let's try what we can do." The child 
will almost certainly set to work with his interest 
stimulated in the toy donkey, whom he already knows, 
and reaching forth to an unexplored novelty, a donkey- 
house, which he does not yet know. This is " pro- 
ceeding from the known to the unknown," as the 
great Herbert Spencer would have said, and is sensi- 
ble. 

Inducing the little child to play for quite a while 
at a single sort of play, is the right means of helping 
him to concentrate his attention. And it can be 
easily done if we start out with the keen stimulus of 
awakened interest in the unknown. If nursery plays 



56 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

proceeded oftener upon the motif of the adult detec- 
tive story, the child mind would benefit. This is the 
natural motif constantly present in nature. To dis- 
cover a mystery, to investigate, to penetrate beneath 
the surface of things, is the mightiest pleasure intel- 
lectual men and women can have. And to the 
smallest child also, a mystery is a shivery delight. 
Not necessarily a painful mystery. We must spare 
them that ; but an awakening puzzle. Any play that 
is too simple in its meaning is tiresome to the child. 
Yet, simplicity is only a thing of experience, and what 
is a problem one day ceases to be one the next. It is 
a happy sign when a child will work patiently at one 
thing until he masters its intricacies and thereafter 
loses all interest in it. Long enough is long enough. 
Never make a pursuit tedious to an active mind. 

It is certainly worth while for us vigilantly to cul- 
tivate in our young children the power of persistent 
attention. Yet nothing is ordinarily more neglected. 
Instead of a training in patience and perseverance our 
nursery regime usually permits an endless succession 
of unfinished pursuits, of capricious pastimes. The 
child of two or three is perpetually amused, and his 
attention diverted so rapidly from one thing to an- 



THROUGH PLAY TO WORK 57 

other that he forms a habit of shifting it upon the 
slightest occasion. And as he is expected to tire of 
everything quickly, he supposes that is the proper 
thing to do. 

Very rarely nowadays do we see a little one amuse 
himself an hour or so at a time with a single play. 
And when we do see such a child we may believe that 
we have fallen upon a genius. " If I in any way 
excel other men/' said Sir Isaac Newton, " it is in 
the power of patient thought." But this power to 
think long and deeply is the most remarkable trait 
a mind can possess. Superficial people cannot chain 
themselves for any length of time to hard mental 
work : merely clever ones dart from one object to an- 
other with a fitfulness that sometimes seems like bril- 
liancy but has no lasting quality. But the capacity 
to dwell for a long time upon one thought involves 
both intensity of desire and innate ambition to reach 
right results. 

I have seen this struggle for perfection show itself 
in an incipient form in a little child but eighteen 
months old. And how sincerely I respected that little 
one. He was sitting on his mother's lap beside the 
library table one evening, when in an idle mood she 



58 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

took up a penny and set it on the head of a small 
gilt image about three inches high and with a head 
scarcely larger than the coin. Seeing that the baby 
watched her she said playfully, " Baby can't do 
that ! " The little one's brown eyes sparkled with a 
look that seemed to say, " Oh, can't I ? " And taking 
the penny in his fingers he essayed to balance it as 
she had done. It fell. " Oh," said baby quietly, 
and picking it up tried again, with the same result. 
Without the least sign of impatience or discourage- 
ment, the little thing tried over and over again for 
seventeen times, until at last he succeeded in balancing 
the coin on the head of the image. 

The brave baby! We gave him a round of ap- 
plause, and he looked from one to the other of us with 
a curious little glance of satisfaction. The next day 
he could not be persuaded to undertake the same feat 
again. Once having demonstrated that he could do 
it the act lost its interest. Here was a tiny hero in 
want of difficulties to conquer; an infant Newton, 
excelling in the ability to concentrate his whole mind 
upon a single object so long as it was necessary for 
that object to absorb his attention, and then putting 
it behind him while he advanced to something beyond. 



THROUGH PLAY TO WORK 59 

Few little children, of course, voluntarily set them- 
selves to overcome difficulties, yet more would do so 
if parents and nurses were not in the habit of cater- 
ing to that flightiness characteristic of all young 
things, which leads them to follow up whatever mo- 
mentarily attracts their attention. If the stimulus 
of surprise alluded to above, was accompanied by the 
strong mental sensation of aroused desire to excel, 
or at least, to equal an example, the child would much 
more readily develop power of concentration. 

But education in this respect must not go too fast. 
To fatigue a growing power is to stunt it. The little 
one's interest in a new thing may be held by the parent 
just so long as he does not show signs of fatigue, but 
after that the persistence in work is an injury to 
him. Ordinarily, there is a drooping of the body, 
a shifting of position from one foot to the other, a 
droop of the eye-lids, betraying bodily languor when 
the little brain becomes over-taxed. When this oc- 
curs we must at once change the subject. To rest the 
mind let the body become active. An out-door play 
is the right alternative to an in-door pursuit, but even 
a little game with the windows open is sufficient to 
change the atmosphere for a child, who happily, re- 



60 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

cuperates from fatigue as quickly as he yields to 
it. 

One of the hest ways of teaching a small child to 
fix his attention is to enlist his fancy. Upon this law 
of attraction Froebel built his system of educational 
plays. When the little one of three or four enters 
the kindergarten he is pretty sure of some good mental 
training, although this depends more upon the teacher 
than is generally known. All kindergarten teaching 
is not Froebel training, by any means. But the ma- 
jority of children are spoiled for the best results 
before they enter the kindergarten because they are 
not trained from infancy to like anything strongly ; to 
attach themselves to a single object or pursuit. The 
baby who shows persistent liking for one toy, for one 
play over and above all others, is a hopeful object. 
For this capacity for preference is a sign of the dis- 
position that has within it tenacity of purpose. 

A mother who has at heart the true interest of her 
child will leave nothing undone to attach that child 
very early to some particular kind of activity, were it 
merely kite-flying. If she can arouse a deep interest 
in beetles, in machinery, in railroading, in artistic 
doll-dress-making, in the making of fudge, so that 



THROUGH PLAY TO WORK 61 

her boy learns to use energy without stint in con- 
structing his miniature railroad, her girl develops 
capacity to make better fudge than any of her little 
friends, she will have accomplished a great deal. We 
must rescue the child from the bog of vagueness and 
lift him on to the sure ground of purpose and design. 
The only hopeless child is one who cares about noth- 
ing. His hold on life is so loose that it is like the 
worst form of pessimism in an adult. But a deep at- 
tachment to any honest pursuit is a saving grace for 
the idle, a spur to the able child. 

We should permit our child great freedom in his 
early attachments if we aim to increase his faculty 
of persistent attention. At first our only hold upon 
him is through his desire for immediate enjoyments. 
Time does not exist for the very young. To defer a 
reward too long is to discourage their efforts. Let 
them see a thing near enough to get the flavor of it 
in their present. Let them get enjoyment out of the 
thing itself, instead of out of some future result. 
How the world has changed for all of us in three 
decades ! We can remember when work was called 
drudgery and reward held out for its performance, 
when days were bitter that evenings might be pleasant. 



62 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

But the newer, brighter philosophy knows that 
Shakespeare's beautiful eulogy of effort was an in- 
spiration that will last forever; and that it is and 
will always be true that " Joy's soul is in the doing." 
The child is a diviner. He feels that there ought 
to be joy in work, and if there is not something is 
wrong. In fact, because there is not yet any co- 
ordination in his muscles and nerves, all effort is work 
and play to him at the same time. He calls throw- 
ing stones in the water, work. To turn his vagueness 
into purpose we may show him how to direct his 
stones toward a certain point. When he learns to 
aim he has learned to control some wandering im- 
pulses. The deft, silent but persistent infusing of 
purpose into the plays of childhood is the best kind 
of teaching a mother can attempt. The instant we 
succeed in kindling the spark of ambition within the 
small breast the rest is easy. We may thereafter di- 
rect him to occupations that are not entirely agreeable 
at first sight, as he views them, but promise enjoyment 
later on, when skill has been gained. And with this 
we set our child the first great lesson of life; that 
steady attention to the work undertaken is the only 
way to gain permanent satisfaction. 



CHAPTER V 
The Mother Tongue 

" There is an easily conceivable state of things that w^uld 
dispense entirely with school instruction in the mother 
tongue." — Bain. 

ENGLISH is sometimes called " the grammar- 
less language " ; but many of us will recall 
certain dull old text books of a past genera- 
tion that made spring afternoons disagreeable to us, 
shut within the walls of the school room, conning 
over and over again, the phrases that were set us 
to parse. And what was the use of it all? Only 
to stuff the memory with a dross that experience was 
at some pains to cast off. The study of English gram- 
mar does not impart capacity to speak the language 
correctly. It merely confirms knowledge previously 
gained. Unless the child grows up in an atmosphere 
of culture he will have great trouble in acquiring the 
fluent use of his mother tongue. 

63 



64 THE MOTHER IjST EDUCATION 

The great difference between children of cultivated 
parents and those whose early surroundings were 
sordid, is manifest in their capacity for expression. 
The well reared child uses language with complete 
ease and naturalness ; even the niceties of expression 
coming from him with unconscious imitation of his 
elders at home. He has the advantage of a large 
vocabulary, being thereby enabled to draw fine dis- 
tinctions ; than which there is no more important fea- 
ture of education. I have known children of three- 
and-a-half years capable of appreciating the delicate 
shades of meaning in such words as " inclination," 
" naturally," " temperament " and other less common 
words. And such familiarity with the mother tongue 
may come without the least effort if the child is always 
talked with as if he was an intelligent being, not a toy. 

From feeling and doing, the child passes to speak- 
ing. For the first eighteen months he will compass 
little more than the mastery of the elemental sounds 
— " ba, da, la, ma," etc. And these it has ever been 
the delight of mothers to teach their little ones. 
What a proud day it is when baby utters two syllables 
consecutively, and lisps out unintentionally, that 
name soon to become the synonym of his earthly hap- 



THE MOTIIEE TONGUE 65 

piness — " mama ! " Through the quick response 
made to this vague call he gets his first lesson in 
naming objects, or word-teaching. And henceforth 
he proceeds to give names to everything that interests 
him, twisting appellatives in his efforts to imitate and 
so building up that peculiar lingo known as " baby 
language." 

The temptation to adopt this quaint, distorted dia- 
lect when talking to babies continually besets lovers of 
children, who feel a natural impulse to bring them- 
selves down to the level of infantile understanding. 
But we should recollect that it is no compliment to 
the person we desire to please, to repeat his imitations. 
If there really were such a thing as baby language, 
originated by infants and founded upon a different 
plan from our own, we might judiciously adopt it 
temporarily. But " baby lingo " is merely a strug- 
gling, incomplete mother tongue, the earnest attempt 
of the little mind in our midst to adapt itself to adult 
ways of communication. Is it not unjust to throw 
this little toiler back on his own resources? True 
sympathy would impel us to rather aid his toil by 
teaching him, bit by bit, as he is able to follow, the 
nomenclature which is to give him power to express 



66 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION . 

his own personality and link him to human life and 
thought. 

How early the child gets a sense of its own identity 
is a puzzling question. Usually it repeats its own 
name soon after it can repeat the syllables, with ap- 
parent reference to itself. At twenty months it is 
safe to say that the normal child realizes itself as a 
personage, separate from others. It then begins to 
make a kind of stand for its personal rights, its ego 
assuming importance in its own eyes. Some children 
begin to say " I " about this time, but ordinarily, the 
habit of alluding to himself by the name others call 
him by holds for the first two or three years. In this 
matter, there should be no interference; let the child 
call himself anything he likes ; let him give any odd 
name to things that may tickle his fancy; only, we 
should not aid him in any eccentricity, by helping him 
to give fancy names to objects. What the little one 
does of his own accord is not amiss ; his small errors 
will drop away as he corrects himself by comparison 
with adults. But if adults themselves talk nonsense 
with whom may he compare himself for his improve- 
ment ? 

It is perhaps, hard to adopt the golden mean and 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 67 

neither aid too fast nor hinder over much. Our plan 
must be to let the child learn of his own impulse, 
rather than to teach him deliberately to talk. He 
will learn swiftly and surely, through the tendency 
to imitate, if we are careful to set good models before 
them. " Did she ever talk baby talk ? " asked the 
kindergarten teacher, when my three-and-a-quarter- 
year-old little girl entered her class. A shy, silent tot 
she was, but her tongue once loosened she uttered her 
fancies as well as most children of thrice her age. 
Without any consciousness of her advantage, because 
she was in the habit of using words as her home circle 
used them. 

There ought not to be any effort made to " talk 
down " to little ones. But we should be careful to 
make every word we use very distinct, clear and per- 
fect in enunciation. It is probably inevitable that 
children hear some slang; it is unfortunately, one of 
the kinds of dross housekeepers do not sweep out in 
the spring house-cleanings. But the person who takes 
pains to teach some tot a bit of slang, purely for the 
fun of hearing the infant tongue lisp the twisted syl- 
lables, or shout the meaningless phrase, deserves the 
punishment that he will get from having that phrase 



68 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

dinned in his ears endlessly, in season and out of sea- 
son. I recollect a young army officer who thought it 
comical to instil into a three-year-old boy an acquaint- 
ance with some choice army slang, and who was un- 
able to make a call at that house for months after- 
wards without feeling the rush of a small body 
against his own, while the shout rang in his ears — 
" I'll put a head on you, I'll put. a head on you ! " 
until he wished he had never been so smart. Now 
it is certain that our child will learn all the slang 
that is good for him outside, in the street, or at 
school; we need not help this side of his training. 
On the other hand, it is not wise to insist on the ab- 
solutely accurate pronunciation of all words he uses 
for the first time. It is discouraging to the two- 
year-old disciple of culture. It is better to correct 
his mistakes indirectly, by being accurate in our own 
pronunciation. Bright children readily accept sug- 
gestions and do not need perpetual drill. 

Certain quaint idioms grow up in nearly all 
nurseries and may be tolerated while they last. 
Children with a spice of originality are pretty sure 
to invent names for things, either because the names 
we tell them are too hard for their undisciplined 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 69 

tongues, or through some capricious impulse. Eor 
instance, a small boy always would say " bow-wop " 
instead of the more usual " bow-bow " for dog, and 
a little girl of fifteen months invented for her bottle 
of milk the queer title " bobbetty-ann," which con- 
tinued as a household phrase for several weeks. 

The child with a musical ear — and Preyer says 
that no child whose hearing is normally constituted 
is entirely unmusical — acquires not only words, but 
accents infallibly. And as the rule is in all ped- 
agogical codes — Never to teach the child anything 
he will have to unlearn — it is supremely desirable 
that the little one be surrounded from the first with 
persons whose speech is not only free from the 
grosser errors, but refined. We have advanced so far 
as to banish the stuttering nurse, although she pos- 
sess angelic virtues; let us go further and root out 
the brogue of the " good-hearted " Irish girl, with 
her supposed attachment to her charge and her un- 
curbed temper which makes her discipline as rough 
as her tongue. " Ole mammy " has vanished by 
natural process, and while we yearn for the graces 
of manner and juvenility of mind which made the 
transplanted African an incomparable nurse, we may 



70 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

congratulate ourselves that her unforgetable murder 
of English is a thing of the past. 

How they stuck — those perversions of speech! 
I recollect how much pains my father — a Northern 
man married into a Southern family — took with 
me in my tender years, regarding the substitution 
of " them " for " those," which is one of the com- 
monest errors of the African. And how relentless 
he was in penalties for the employment of the double 
negative. Thanks to him, I passed unscathed 
through the language ordeal of a colored nurse and 
child comrades with a singularly slip-shod vocabu- 
lary. But the triumph was hardly earned by a won- 
drous unpopularity and the charge of being a " little 
miss Dictionary." The school child makes the path 
of superiority hard. The compensations, however, 
enable one to bear with some satisfaction the little 
discomforts of that swift-gliding epoch. 

The careful mother allows no one to care for her 
little ones whose speech is notably deficient in gram- 
matical construction. Sprightly Master Charles and 
little Miss Dora are too much on the alert to add 
new words to their vocabulary for it to be safe to 
trust them with any species of ignoramus. Yet, de- 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 71 

spite good care, most persons whose lives are passed 
out in the world, not among books, retain in ma- 
turity some crude accents learned in childhood. 
When they speak correctly they are affected. Fluent 
elegance results from that right usage early in life 
which makes pure language " second nature." Noth- 
ing more infallibly denotes the best breeding, for 
slovenly enunciation and slang terms are so preva- 
lent even in excellent schools that the young person 
who speaks the mother tongue Avith a pure accent at 
once establishes his superior training. 

Professor Charles Eliot has expressed himself very 
earnestly on the subject of the supreme importance 
of culture in the mother tongue. He goes so far 
as to declare that person well educated who has a good 
education in English, though he may be lacking both 
in the classics and science. Some sacrifice, some 
particular attention, is therefore, not too stringent 
a demand to make upon the parent who wishes to se- 
cure for his offspring this rare and fine culture. For 
it is rare. With the general relaxation of all rules 
of propriety for our young people nowadays, we 
have lately excused them from the necessity of speak- 
ing good English. The talk of the grammar school 



72 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

child, just dismissed from the class room, is appalling. 
Everything is apparently, to he learned; the school 
has been able to do almost nothing in the way of 
practical insight into the beauties of language and 
the obligation of a correct use of the mother tongue. 
Nor does the current literature of the day afford any 
assistance, such as the older literature, stilted and 
unnatural as it was in many respects, did afford. I 
observe that in modern fiction which deals with the 
talk of upper class children, their talk is far below 
that of their parents. They say " you ain't " — " as 
never was," " drawed " for drawn, and so on. It is 
no wonder, if this is a photograph of life and they are 
allowed to talk in this way at home, that school 
teachers find it impossible to convey to their lower 
grades a practical knowledge of grammar. It must 
seem to the ordinary child as dead a tongue as He- 
brew. It is what we hear daily, what enters into our 
ordinary existence, that gets hold of us. 

It is essential then, even at the risk of making 
our child what is called " priggish " in the eyes of his 
unlettered comrades, to impress upon him the abso- 
lute necessity of using only pure speech. Let it 
be simple and unadorned when he is with his crowd ; 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 73' 

but at least, not faulty. If he finds it indispensable 
in play, to bring in a popular slang term, let it be 
as a superficial tag that can be easily dropped again. 
The use of correct language does not constitute any 
restraint upon the life, liberty or happiness of a 
young person. It is as easy to talk brightly and 
cheerfully in pure accents and with the use of irre- 
proachable terms as in the foulest vernacular. Chil- 
dren, however, seek for strong expressions; simple, 
concrete words with a tang to them. And this is an 
indication of the superiority of Saxon words for 
every-day use. How much better is it, for instance, 
to teach a child to express the idea of living in a 
house by the respectable word — full of associations 
— " dwell " instead of the affected " reside " which 
I have heard little girls fling out with an air that 
marked them imitators of some " refined " nurse. 
Only persons with a real gift for feeling word values 
can appreciate the difference between the sensations 
evoked in the untaught child mind by various words 
that have invisible links with certain thoughts. Yet 
there are magnetic words ; for instance, to tell a child 
to " rest," brings with the very suggestion something 
almost irresistible. He may protest that he is not 



74 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

tired ; yet the word " rest " is soothing ; it has a 
concrete meaning and leads to an action. While the 
phrase that is so often thoughtlessly dinned into 
heedless little ears — " be quiet ! " is provocative. 
It suggests a suppression, an inhibition leading away 
from desire, and is in the nature of a command con- 
trary to personal wishes. 

Parents should be ca«reful about using two words 
that are commonly misplaced and lead to mental con- 
fusion in the child. They are " look " and " see." 
Some instinct tells the child that he ought not to be 
required to see everything he looks at. He may be 
looking, with all his might 'and yet fail to see the 
thing that his attention is being drawn to. " I am 
looking ! " the little one cries out, and becomes ir- 
ritated at being accused of not attending. Seeing is 
a mental act, yet not one person in many discrimi- 
nates between observing a thing with the eye, and 
perceiving the meaning of it, inwardly. If we are 
so careless in the separation of ide&s how can we ex- 
pect to make ourselves intelligible to a child ? It is 
correct to say, when we wish to direct the little one's 
attention to an object ; — " Look at that dog, dear. 
Do you see what a nice expression he has ? " While 



THE MOTHEE TONGUE 75 

it would be entirely wide of the mark to ask him 
to " look " at the dog's amiable face, because the ani- 
mal's amiability is a quality, not an object, and to be 
apprehended by the mind alone. If a mother will 
spend a little time in thinking out the significance 
of the words most in common use when she is con- 
versing with her child, and clearly distinguishing 
between those that denote acts and those that refer 
to thoughts only, she will avoid some of the worst 
pit-falls of language, and come to an understanding 
with her child that may seem to her almost mar- 
velous. 

Many of the unreasonable requisitions of parents 
arise through a misapprehension between adult and 
child about language. I heard my grandfather — a 
wise lawyer — say many years ago, that most of the 
cases that came into his hands had their origin in 
some misunderstanding about " terms of speech." 
He observed that if once persons could come to a 
complete understanding as to the meaning of the 
words they employed most disputes could be avoided. 
If it is difficult for adults to understand one another, 
is it not much harder for a child to get the mean- 
ing of words that come crowding upon him before he 



76: THE MOTHEB IN EDUCATION 

has had the experience to discern that there are, 
shades of meaning between every two ? Children 
who are ambitious of shining as talkers have funny 
little experiences. I recollect that I heard a pedanti- 
cal little comrade use a word that struck me as 
vastly fine — " repeat," when I was about seven years 
old, and I sought a fitting occasion to bring it in. 
So, on trying to state that something I knew was 
too momentous to be put into words, I observed that 
I could not " repeat " it. The other girl looked at 
me with a superior air and commented drily, " You 
mean you can't express it, don't you ? " And I was 
struck dumb with admiration, nor ventured to try 
another original phrase on her for many a long day. 
How many years ago that was, and it seems like only 
yesterday! Such indelible impressions do these 
apparently trivial incidents make on the child 
mind. 

Parents can aid their children materially, not only 
by using good English before them but by oc- 
casionally dropping in their presence a hint about 
some general grammatical rule so simple that they 
can themselves apply it. What difference does it 
make where we get our knowledge, so we get it ? Let 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 77 

the rule come out of a story, if possible ; it will make 
the deeper impression. It was from the habit of 
" browsing in a library " which Oliver Wendell 
Holmes said was the best of all kinds of education, 
that I gleaned many a bit of grammatical lore which 
no one could have forcibly instilled into a dreaming 
head. A trivial story impressed a certain fact that 
text-books might have preached in vain, about af- 
firmatives and negatives. A poem of Moore told me 
other things more distinctly than Lindley Murray 
ever did. A mother who takes the pains to clinch 
a fact with a tale need never repeat her argument. 
It is easy in this way to make grammar take root 
in a child's mind without the use of a text-book, and 
a wonderful saving of time may be accomplished 
in school education. 

I have seen this ideal carried out in families where 
conscientious care is bestowed on the nursery. Mites 
of three converse as fluently and with as faultless a 
use of the mother tongue as their seniors by many 
years. One six-year-old boy expresses philosophical 
ideas in excellent language. " Prigs ? " By no 
means. Natural, simple, shy children, entirely un- 
conscious of their own superiority ; knowing no better 



T8 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

than to practise daily the culture belonging of right 
to their condition. 

We owe it to our children to give them the best 
we have or can achieve at all times. When the tot 
with head scarce reaching to our knee asks anxiously, 
" Is that right ? Why isn't that right ? " we ought to 
answer as truly as if we were on the witness stand 
in court. Every fairly educated woman ought to be 
able to train her children in the correct use of the 
mother tongue. It is merely a question of inclination 
on her part. The miserable excuse for not making 
the effort is usually that children " will learn all 
that after awhile in school." I wish to make it 
clear that they will never learn grammar so well in 
school and after six years as they can learn it at home 
before six. 

If the Socratic method, the verbal method of im- 
parting learning, is of any value anywhere, it is of 
value in teaching languages. Especially in teaching 
the mother tongue. We need not be forever drilling 
a child and it is not even necessary to be eternally 
thinking about instructing him. Example is a great 
deal. And judgment helps. We should realize that 
some idiosyncrasies are native to childhood. It is an 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 79 

infantile tendency to make all verbs regular and to 
invent adjectives. The' three-year-old often says 
" roily " for slippery ; " fally " for unsafe, etc. 
These inventions ought to be treated indulgently, for 
they will speedily be out-grown. It is more im- 
portant to help a child to extend his vocabulary by 
using new terms in his presence, in a way he can 
comprehend. 

There is an immense difference between children 
in the number of words they employ at the same age. 
Some possess about fifteen hundred words at three 
years, others less, and others again, two thousand. 
It is desirable for them to get early as large a vocabu- 
lary as possible, but this will regulate itself. By the 
time he is four an intelligent child ought to be able 
to express most that he thinks and feels without much 
difficulty. And if he has been well taught he will 
not have the slightest trouble in transferring his flu- 
ency to paper as soon as he learns to write. Gram- 
mar and composition and even the elements of 
rhetoric will have been insensibly acquired during 
the first six or eight years and the best possible start 
made toward a good education. Picture books with 
verses are very helpful, but the mother should 



80 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

choose those that are well written ; that is, by authors 
who know how to write English. One idea clearly 
expressed is worth twenty that are put forth in an 
involved, obscure style. 



CHAPTEK VI 

Cultivating- Observation 

" Qualities are not inherent in objects ; they are what we 
have experienced about these objects. Hence, the different 
ways people have of seeing things." — McLellan. 

DID you ever hunt a needle in a haystack ? 
Did you ever go to a world's fair with 
an immense crowd about you and try to 
pick out the masterpiece in the Italian gallery of 
paintings and the choicest bit of ivory carving in 
the Swiss rooms? Or did you ever try to find a 
friend on Broadway, who had promised to meet you 
about three in the afternoon, somewhere between 
Thirty-fourth and Forty-second streets! Then you 
know what it is to be bewildered and made cross 
by a whirling succession of impressions and a mass 
of indistinguishable objects all hurtling against your 
eyes and ears until you are weary of the world. 
So the big world seems to a little, little child, 

81 



82 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

tagging after its parents, trying to find something 
small enough to get hold of and understand. So he 
becomes weary and discouraged in the endeavor to 
pick out single impressions from those that are 
thronging on his senses. And how much he needs 
the aid of his parents' experience ; how absolutely he 
is at the mercy of their candor and sympathy, and 
fainting for their practical advice ! How rarely is 
his need understood and ministered to ! There is 
scarcely a day that I am not made impatient with 
the abstraction of mothers who take their children 
abroad for recreation. Their bored air and listless 
replies depress youthful spirits and discourage con- 
versation. They perform unwillingly a disagreeable 
duty, not realizing that while they are exercising the 
bodies of their charges they are helping to stultify 
their minds. By refusing to give intelligent replies 
to the eager, interested questions of the little crea- 
tures they are simply throwing the children back upon 
themselves in a way to confuse their faculties beyond 
recall. 

Yet apart from the value of a mother's explana- 
tions to her little one I believe that any one who tries 
the plan can get real pleasure from watching and 



CULTIVATING OBSERVATION 83 

helping on the pretty play of childish observations 
and ideas. We get richly repaid for our slight 
trouble in the possession of intelligent, well-informed 
children whose susceptibility to new impressions is 
keen yet sane, without that unfortunate nervousness 
that too often shows itself where a shy nature has 
to recover from rebuffs and overcome too many un- 
pleasant obstacles in the satisfaction of its legitimate 
curiosity. 

Every miscomprehension on the part of an elder 
is a rebuff, and these are deplorably frequent. We 
are so kind about drawing to the surface the latent 
virtues and talents of our friends, and so indifferent 
to the true meaning of our children's stammering 
exj^lanations ! Do we seriously question ourselves 
as to the validity of the impressions our children have 
gained from us about those numerous matters they 
have laid before us, trusting our. oracular judgment ? 
Have we been careful, deliberate and definite 
in responding to appeals and equally prudent 
in excluding from their eyes and ears things likely 
to hurt their mobile minds? Nothing is more cer- 
tain than that the child who is not guarded from 
evil and supplied with mental food which is whole- 



84 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

some and agreeable will find out for himself some 
sort of nutriment to feed his insatiate hunger for new 
impressions. The less he digests the more he seeks, 
like a dyspeptic who swallows masses of food and 
assimilates nothing. The child who wearies quickly 
of everything, who longs for excitement constantly 
renewed, who glances at this and that and cares for 
nothing, — this is the child who has not been trained 
to observe anything well, whose eyes wander, whose 
ears are dull, whose faculties are not awakened to 
the details of any phase of life, but who simply 
thinks of everything as a great moving picture show, 
which he can look at without making any effort to 
comprehend. 

The first feeling that lifts a human being above 
the level of the brutes is wonder. Animals are 
capable of astonishment only; not of awe and ad- 
miration. The higher we go in the scale of hu- 
manity the more completely developed we find a 
feeling which is the beginning of religious and moral 
ideas, as it is the life of the intellect. Dull and 
ignorant people have a little of it but in a passive 
way. They see a thing which is out of the range of 
their experience, and they recognize, with something 



CULTIVATING OBSERVATION 85 

like envious surprise, that it is above their compre- 
hension. In those southern countries where railroads 
are still unfamiliar the young darkies will sometimes 
stand for hours, gazing with vague, dumb astonish- 
ment at a steam threshing machine, affrighted at its 
noisy whistle, and ready to flee at the first sign of 
malignity on the part of the supposed demon. Their 
wonder is a poor, meager sentiment. They stand 
like animals, simply stultified. 

But with what tremors a child of cultured parents 
views new machines! Here is something to investi- 
gate, to trace to its source. He is charmed at find- 
ing something not quite simple and which he must 
labor to understand. The working of the shining 
wheels and pistons, the dilating, life-like action of 
the splendid thing enchains his imagination and he 
could study it forever. It is disappointing to be 
allowed only a superficial view of what is so full of 
delightful mystery; to be torn away with his curi- 
osity only half satisfied, and cut off with a perfunc- 
tory history of the wonder that has attracted all his 
admiration. I think the best person to show a child 
the machinery hall in a museum is a youthful grand- 
father. He is able to re-live his childish sensations 



86 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

and sympathize with the excitement a child feels at 
sight of wondrous novelties as a jaded father or 
mother cannot! And then, the grandfather has 
plenty of time; parents only a limited amount. It 
must be admitted that to satisfy a child time is 
necessary. 

The manner in which a child views a great, mag- 
nificent piece of machinery in action indicates the 
measure of his general intelligence. The dull child 
will exhibit merely fright; the born mechanician or 
the originating, progressive mind is filled with ad- 
miration, and feels itself stimulated to emulation, in- 
spired to new flights. Such a child goes home filled 
with the desire to undertake enterprises of his own; 
he too, wants to propel boats, drive the great factory 
wheel, manage the engine, and put in operation that 
force which seems to him the embodiment of all 
poetry. In a word, he would become a navigator, 
an engineer, just as earlier, attracted through lower 
appetites, he longed to keep a candy shop or sell soda 
water. 

It is customary to take no account of these fleet- 
ing and shallow desires which children from time to 
time betray to us ; but trivial as they seem they may 



CULTIVATING OBSERVATION 87 

influence their whole lives. There is no possibility 
of estimating the effect of a single impression npon 
the mind of a mere infant. Memory treasures up 
the most absurd incidents in our past life and neg- 
lects to register events that we consider of supreme 
importance. Nor do we know why. We cannot in 
any way determine what particular impression is to 
become permanent or what one will fade away. Re- 
calling our past, we are often vexed to find some 
trifling incident recur again and again, that we would 
fain put away, while about the great and stirring 
occurrence which we are eager to recollect in detail 
we have the vaguest idea. And it is the little things 
that return often that influence us most and finally 
come to have a strong hold on our natures. The 
ridiculous experiences of which a child's memory is 
built up ! I remember now with mortification, that 
for many years a queer old superstition about poison 
being located in the first finger of the left hand 
brought me to the habit of avoiding the use of that 
finger. I would not touch my face with it, because 
a garrulous neighbor who was in the way of being a 
favorite with me, once said emphatically — " All the 
poison in your body is in that first finger ! " I told 



88 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

nobody about it but believed the story and recollected 
it. It is strange but true that the trifling likings and 
dislikes of our childhood grow into the tastes 
and prejudices of maturity. Consequently, what 
a child thinks and prefers is important. He is 
the master of his own fate, through the very infan- 
tile preferences of which we so seldom take ac- 
count. 

Children often seemed to be whirled about like 
leaves in a high wind, silly in their changeableness. 
They want one thing to-day and something else to- 
morrow and there appears to be no reason to 
suppose that one of their aims or ambitions is of 
more consequence than another. Nevertheless, there 
is some little betrayal of character through these 
flippancies. A certain note sounds once and again 
as a single strain of melody creeps through the be- 
wildering crash of Wagner's music. Happy that 
mother who is gifted with such insight that she can 
follow this slender thread of personality through the 
inconsistencies of her child's ideas ! There is always 
a key-note, a persistent fancy or taste, and if that is 
wisely laid hold of it becomes the guide to a perfect 
education of his faculties. The persistent taste will 



CULTIVATING OBSERVATION 89 

inevitably give the cast to character, and the stronger 
it is the more valuable will be the character. 

The strongest impression of all our lives makes or 
mars us. What brutal men have grown up through 
a hatred contracted in tender years! What heroes 
have developed out of a reward wisely bestowed, 
what numbers of men and women can look back to 
some episode in their earlier years that changed the 
current of all their lives for the better or the worse ! 
A book I am fond of re-reading is one of Cherbuliez' 
volumes, " Jean Teterolle." There a boy is thrashed 
unjustly by a baron who employs him to trim his 
trees, and goes out into the world with the one idea 
of some day returning to that estate and buying it 
for himself, and so lording it over the man who has 
insulted him. And by toiling early and late, by 
making use of every chance to rise and accumulate 
money, he does fulfil his vow ; and lives to buy in the 
mortgaged estate and triumph over the baron's son. 
Jean is not an ill character, but so rugged and rough 
that the effect of that injustice so deeply felt, is 
manifest through all his after career. A single blow 
from a baron's stick changed an entire life. And it 
is true to nature. People seldom choose their careers 



90 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

in accordance with their natural abilities; they are 
swept into the current of circumstances by some 
fortuitous event. But those who do choose, who 
pursue the careers they are best fitted for have that 
happiness which is better than riches; the joy of 
work in the occupations they love. 

Wise guardians who have power over circumstances 
as well as sagacity, continually open up to children 
fresh sources of knowledge, so that after becoming 
acquainted with many different kinds of action they 
may be sure of finding what makes a genuine appeal 
to their natures. It is unfortunate when a definite, 
decisive choice about a career is made prematurely. 
Eor the taste sticks. Children readily become nar- 
row in their views. They form attachments on slight 
grounds, and the fewer attachments one has the more 
bigoted he grows. 

I would expand the child's mind by showing him 
from time to time scenes from all sides of life. Take 
him to-day to studios and let him see how pictures 
are made; next week to silk factories, to learn the 
poetry of labor, and afterward to a brick-yard and 
iron foundry, not forgetting the claims of churches 
and great monuments upon an elevating education. 



CULTIVATING OBSERVATION 91 

The alternation of country and town life is a delight- 
ful stimulant, and each season has its appropriate les- 
son. Actual experience is worth a world of book lore. 
It is not particularly interesting to a child to read in 
his history that he should be grateful to all those who 
supply him with the comforts of his daily life ; to the 
farmer, the baker, the manufacturer, the builder. 
But when he sees how grain grows and is converted 
into flour, how furniture is wrought from blocks of 
wood, and threads woven into cloth, the whole his- 
tory of the objects about him is revealed. The dif- 
ferent parts of life become connected and he gets a 
sense of the thread of harmony that runs through all. 
We debate about how early a child's education 
should begin; whether telling him the truth about 
flowers and stones and the stars is not " crowding 
his mind " at the age of three or four. But the time 
to make the earth interesting to him is that instant, 
be it early or later, that he begins to find the earth 
interesting. My little girl, at four, began to show the 
liveliest interest in the sky, and besought her father 
to talk about it with her. As he was an accom- 
plished astronomer, he told her some simple little 
tales that stimulated her curiosity so much that each 



92 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

night, as soon as the darkness settled down, she would 
run for her little coat and hat and beseech him to take 
her up to the roof to " study the stars." Such a 
happy occupation could not possibly militate against 
the health of any child; what the little one is so 
drawn toward is an indication that the study should 
be entered upon ; even at the most tender age. 

There is not half so much danger as we apprehend 
that we will make our offspring too clever ! So long 
as the little one seeks knowledge he is in a safe way. 
It is when he believes himself competent to impart 
it that we may begin to be uneasy! And the best 
way to keep our ambitious modern children level- 
headed is to permit them early — very early — the 
companionship of cultivated persons whom they must 
recognize as their superiors. American parents are 
among the best in the world in some respects. But 
in respect to surrounding their children from the 
very first with elevating influences, they might take 
a hint from Philip, King of Macedon, who said 
to the wise Aristotle, " I wish my son to be saved 
from making the mistakes I have made, and com- 
mitting the follies I have committed." 

In every child is the germ of every talent, every 



CULTIVATING OBSEKVATION 93 

power. Why do some develop genius, others mania, 
and others grow to be normal beings? Are there 
other influences to be reckoned with, beside heredity 
and education % There must be reasons for the varia- 
tions from the average that constantly take place, and 
also, for the peculiarities persons exhibit unwillingly 
and unconsciously. All of us are moved at times to 
acts we had not contemplated, and do things out of 
our plans because we " cannot help it." What gov- 
erns us ? 

There is a fate in habit; not only in our own 
habits, from which we depart daily, but in the habits 
of our forefathers. Without knowing why, we are 
constantly reverting to some way of doing things 
that an ancestor practised; and so the pendulum of 
progress swings backward again, and the world only 
seems to go forward in the whirl of living. It is a 
peculiar thing that although the intellect advances, 
that part of us that governs tastes and preferences 
changes very little. People of advanced ideas some- 
times have the most primitive tastes. The most intel- 
lectual man is drawn to an unlettered companion ; the 
most highly cultured woman likes to " steal awhile 
away " from all her up-lifting pursuits and become 



94 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

a barbarian again, on a camping-out tour in the hills. 
But if we take the pains to trace out the ivhy of these 
eccentric longings for the simpler life, we may often 
find their source in some early influence. If there is 
a fate in inheritance there is, also, a fate in the sur- 
roundings of our childhood — in climate, the views 
near home, all the sights and sounds that nourished 
our senses in infancy. And especially do the recol- 
lections of people who were pleasant to us in those 
old days govern our sympathies. This woman is liked 
because she reminds us of our first heroine ; the person 
whom we looked up to with infantile awe. This man 
seems familiar and agreeable, for we knew his proto- 
type when we had not achieved a dozen years, and 
built ourselves upon the model of his attractions. The 
things we were habituated to in early childhood all aid 
in forming our tastes. We rarely rise much higher 
than the best suggestion made to us then. Even 
though other ways may afterwards be chosen, there 
remains at the root of the character some ineradicable 
preference. The old person who has lived in a for- 
eign land very contentedly, longs to return to his 
native land to die. The world-worn man who has 
achieved success, feels some day the over-mastering 



CULTIVATING OBSERVATION 95 

impulse to go " back to the old home " and be sur- 
rounded once more with all the simple things he loved 
as a boy. Do our early preferences then, ever pass 
away ? 

I believe that what is called individuality comes 
about largely through the action of environment upon 
natural susceptibilities. There is a force in circum- 
stances that nobody can resist ; it exerts an influence 
along the line of least resistance in the character. 
No one is absolutely callous to his surroundings, but 
sensitive natures are wonderfully under their influ- 
ence. Let us not say that the shrinkings or prefer- 
ences of young children are causeless whimsies. It 
is a certain indication of a strong, positive nature 
when a taste that has been persistently discouraged 
to-day crops out again to-morrow. Observe and re- 
spect such manifestations in a child. 

A mother should distinguish between fear and aver- 
sion in her child. The one may be simply momen- 
tary fright, and be reasoned away ; but the other pro- 
ceeds from some innate distaste that it may not be 
wise to attempt to conquer. Sensitiveness to im- 
pressions is a talent; do not try to dull susceptibili- 
ties that may be a splendid educative force. The 



96 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION" 

capacity to take a great deal of pleasure from a 
beautiful environment, or be annoyed by some ugly 
feature of tbe landscape sbows tbat the nature is 
artistic. There is a morality in landscapes tbat may 
awaken in us dispositions toward evil or good. Haw- 
thorne, himself the most susceptible of mortals, bore 
testimony to the shaping hand of destiny through 
environment in his story of " The Great Stone Eace." 
Ideal as it is, the incident is not impossible. We 
grow to resemble even outwardly, what we love ; and 
alas ! by some terrible fascination we come to resemble 
what we hate if we are forced into daily contact with 
it. Through the very antagonism it excites in us un- 
lovely feelings are aroused. 

The preferences and prejudices of childhood are 
strong and intense because the young person is more 
emotional than intellectual. His tastes grow out of 
his loves and hates; not out of deliberate choice of 
what is good over what is evil. And his early tastes 
are to govern him all his life. 

Now, how is it possible to guide our child wisely, 
toward what is estimable, and away from that which 
makes for ill ? I think there is but one way : to edu- 
cate him in the faculty of discrimination. If we 



CULTIVATING OBSERVATION 97 

continually choose for a child what he is to like and 
what he is to do, he becomes a mere tool in onr hands, 
his natural inclinations covered and all the power in 
him for good or ill merely dormant, to break forth 
unexpectedly, perhaps to his undoing, when he is 
thrown on his own resources. 

But the child who is trained early in life to see 
things as they are becomes " as a god, knowing good 
and evil." The capacity to see was considered by 
Buskin as the most important faculty there is. And 
he also pronounced it the rarest. Most people go 
through the world in entire disregard of details ; they 
" did not notice " what they passed by, because their 
senses were heedless. They are incapable of forming 
a judgment of certain events because they gained only 
a cursory view of its most prominent features. If 
they travel they look at rivers and mountains without 
curiosity and admire or deprecate by rote, following 
their guide-book. Half the beauties of the world are 
a closed book to them because the capacity of appre- 
ciation has never been developed, and they remain to 
the end of their days like children whose eyes and 
ears are defective. 

Nothing more clearly shows a trained mind than 



98 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

the ability to make a swift, unerring choice of valu- 
able things out of a mass of worthless ones. But it 
is a capacity demanding long and earnest cultivation 
before it reaches perfection. The training of it must 
be begun very early ; even in infancy. Since all liv- 
ing is merely an instinctive repetition of a once 
learned act of estimating values, the earlier the 
power to make such an estimation can be established 
the sooner the person will be of use to himself. " I 
guess you'll never buy wooden nutmegs/' contentedly 
said a proud grandfather to a little girl whose nice 
instinct had decided that a certain young man was 
not a gentleman. " That child will make a lawyer 
some day/' observed a judge of a small boy who saw 
through some artful tangle of words that had been 
strung out to puzzle him. Shrewdness in the young 
always tickles the fancy of guardians, and they praise 
the wit of children who are not to be beguiled. But 
how merciless they are toward those not so happily 
gifted by nature! Yet with some pains almost all 
children could become quick of perception. They 
must be taught to observe details, and not pass by 
everything with a superficial look. 

" Which one of us will see the larger number of 



CULTIVATING OBSEKVATION 99 

different things on tins walk ? " the wise mother will 
ask, on starting out on the country ramble. And the 
child thus stimulated will in all probability soon be- 
come expert enough to rival herself in his descrip- 
tions. Merely answering questions, without leading 
up to a knowledge of the whys and wherefores, is of 
little use. All questions should receive considera- 
tion, but many of them may be dismissed with a 
word, while others require exhaustive analysis. A 
very good plan is to stimulate the child with some 
little reward to accumulate as many facts as he can 
about what he happens to be interested in at the time. 
Let his aroused curiosity be the guide for the exer- 
cise. It matters little what the thing is he studies, 
so he studies it thoroughly. Of all things thorough- 
ness is the one most important. Montaigne believed 
that the object of education was to fill a boy or girl 
" with an honest curiosity for information about 
everything." We are at last coming to understand 
that any kind of knowledge that the child cares noth- 
ing about and that he acquires against his will is of 
comparatively small profit to him. The great success 
in teaching is to stimulate in the pupil a wish to learn. 



CHAPTER VII 
Imagination Plays 

" There is abundant evidence that the visualizing faculty- 
admits of being largely developed by education." — Galton. 

THE remark quoted above is to be received 
with a good deal of qualification. The best 
education that can be afforded the faculty 
of constructing mental images,- — and upon this fac- 
ulty depends much more of our practical power than 
is generally known — is that of self -training. There 
is danger of a teacher meddling too much rather than 
giving too little help in this direction. In the ear- 
lier years a child should be left a great deal to his 
own untrammeled efforts in the way of building up 
out of his memories certain new combinations that 
take the form with him of fanciful plays. Having 
been taught to observe closely, and to recall easily the 
details of what he has seen, he may be left alone, in 
great measure, to work out those ideas which are 

100 



IMAGINATION PLAYS 101 

insistent and stimulating in the healthy young mind. 
A kindergarten training is an excellent beginning for 
the after home education, especially as it accustoms 
the child very early to ideas of community life. 
But when he is withdrawn from kindergarten and 
the mother seriously takes his home education in her 
own hands, she may safely leave him alone to ponder 
over the things he has learned about plays with his 
kindergarten teacher, and watch how he reconstructs, 
out of old material, new pastimes that mean important 
things to him. 

It has been ascertained that language is not neces- 
sary to thinking; that much of our thinking goes on 
without the aid of words, the brain acting sub-con- 
sciously, using some material less concrete than lan- 
guage as we know it. A kind of language there must 
be, but we do not yet know in what it consists. The 
little child reasons, imagines, and even argues with 
himself, in a sort of dumb show, before he has ac- 
quired a vocabulary. His acts indicate that certain 
mental processes have preceded them that he would be 
puzzled to explain. When long chains of thinking are 
carried on doubtless words are necessary. I recollect 
a period in my childhood when I always whispered to 



102 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

myself a correlating narrative with what I was doing. 
The sound of the words in my own ear seemed to be 
an essential to the pleasure of the actions being car- 
ried on. The little dramatic plays enacted with 
paper dolls thus had a kind of vocal accompaniment 
that made the plays much more real to me. But ob- 
servation of other children has led me to suppose that 
few children converse with themselves during their 
actual playing. The mere acting out of their fancies 
is sufficient. People differ a good deal in respect to 
attachment to words; some being able to act even in 
important things, in a kind of dumb show, while those 
who possess natural fluency feel a running commen- 
tary in their minds about what they see and partici- 
pate in. But every normally constituted child is 
capable of some sort of constructive activity in the 
way of making up plays ; and in this manner he gets 
a valuable kind of self-training. 

An active, healthy imagination is one of the hap- 
piest gifts a child can possess. If we watch an in- 
telligent child of four or iive years, who believes him- 
self unnoticed, we will probably be astonished at the 
richness and fertility of fancy which can give life and 
color to dull, commonplace things, and weave whole 



IMAGINATION PLAYS 103 

stories and dramas around the simple toy that means 
nothing more to us than what it plainly stands for. 
But we will perceive that even his wildest romances 
found themselves upon facts, for free and frolicsome 
as imagination may appear it is subject to its laws. 
It deals with real things in a playful way ; it embroid- 
ers, paints, molds, but it must have its materials ; its 
basis is actual life. What we call creative ability is 
really nothing but the power to reconstruct, perhaps 
to connect several plans or patterns into a whole which 
seems different from the original. 

The child is an irresponsible artist who daubs 
on his color boldly, without much sense of the ab- 
surdities he commits, and so he often produces effects 
that surprise others as well as himself. Many of the 
acts that seem so precocious because we suppose them 
to be the outcome of a well-considered plan are really 
happy accidents; not devoid of the merit of origi- 
nality, but neither to be over-praised as works of gen- 
ius. Childhood is one unbroken series of experiment- 
ings, and if significant results are frequent it is be- 
cause so many different things are attempted. The 
child who is so fortunate as to be left to Nature for 
the first dozen years of his life, and not forced out 



104= THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

of his normal development by wrong training, while 
getting such education as he puts forth voluntary 
efforts for, has the best chance of acquiring rich- 
ness of fancy and power of accurate visualization. 
His ideas are not then distorted by the endeavor to 
make them conform to standards that are often arti- 
ficial. If he has at hand a cultured friend to answer 
his questions and opportunities to gain every sort of 
knowledge he needs from actual experience his de- 
velopment will probably be so far in advance of that 
of ordinary children that he will pass for a genius 
among them. The majority of children are made 
dull, especially in respect to the higher faculties, by 
the zeal of their educators. 

Over-training and undue restraints cripple the nat- 
ural grace of the imagination, although, on the other 
hand, proper education aids its development. The 
very best is a wide experience. The little one who 
has the felicity to associate with people of broad cul- 
ture, who is taken about, on proper occasions, and 
hears and sees many new things, becomes enriched and 
self-confident, while the children of the very poor, 
who know almost no variety in a squalid existence, 



IMAGINATION PLAYS 105 

must use over and over again in their plays, the lim- 
ited knowledge belonging to them. 

The mental limitations of the average school child 
are not sufficiently considered. The other day I hap- 
pened to pass a recreation ground belonging to a 
large public school, where a troup of kindergarten 
children were going through a game that should be 
accompanied by music. The circle consisted of chil- 
dren far above the average in looks, evidently belong- 
ing to the class that has the privileges of opportunity. 
But the listlessness, the dulness and lack of interest 
apparent through the little circle showed the perfunc- 
tory nature of this educative game ; the teacher herself 
looked bored to extinction, and not a single child 
showed any of the liveliness that one would suppose 
natural to the occasion. It was merely a drill; as are 
most of such exercises in public schools; and must 
have left the effect of penalty rather than of pleasure 
on the participants in it. Systematized plays have 
this disadvantage ; that they require unusual tact, ex- 
perience and originality in the leader or teacher. It 
is far better for the child to be left free to work out 
its instinctive ideas of frolic unaided than that he 



106 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

should be fettered in the free exercise of his fancy by 
the obligation of drill. If these plays have a subtle 
meaning, if they are really work then why not call 
them work % A natural child is not averse to work ; 
I think that honest effort is by no means repugnant to 
him, but he does resent being beguiled into calling 
work play, and having his amusements made so tame 
that they might as well be left out, for all the pleasure 
he takes in them. 

It is instructive to observe the difference between 
the child who has been gently trained and the one who 
has been over-restrained in plays with dolls. The 
one is all tenderness and solicitude, the other harsh 
and hard in her imaginary maternity. She knocks 
her senseless infant about in a way that bodes ill for 
her future real offspring, since the little girl is mother 
to the woman, and the spontaneous acts of childhood 
forecast what independent life will become. 

Yet poverty and wealth are of themselves power- 
less to curb the imaginative faculties. One may be 
surrounded by the most beautiful objects and have 
everything to gratify the taste and fancy, yet remain 
unbenefited by these means of education. Many 
children being reared in luxurious homes are listless 



IMAGINATION PLAYS 107 

and indifferent instead of being bright and interested 
in their surroundings, because the one vital spark es- 
sential to the quickening of their whole natures is 
denied them. They have no companion who is ca- 
pable of uplifting them. Their intimate companions 
are ignorant nurses, who deal in suppression instead 
of suggestion. No wonder that the dear little child 
seated in the corner of its beautiful nursery, with 
this censor and hard critic of the ideal ever present, 
feels no inspiration to create a wonder-working world 
out of its abundant material. If the divine fire kin- 
dles in its heart it shyly stifles betraying signs, and 
whispers to itself the fancies and ideas that would in- 
evitably be ridiculed if revealed. 

Happy that little one who, even with a poor home, 
has a sympathetic, companionable mother; who is 
patient with his whimsies, and helpful in carrying 
out the perpetual little plans and wishes that are 
suggested to him by his observation of what is going 
on about him. 

In everything concerning the welfare of the child 
we must go back to the mother. She not only endows 
the child with her own emotional nature but she makes 
the home atmosphere in which what is best in him 



108 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

will wither or come to perfection. With the right 
home atmosphere and a loving mother the natural at- 
titude of the child is that of spontaneous, continual 
activity, mental as well as physical. His mind re- 
ceives and stores up an incredible number of impres- 
sions every day, and as he lives out in his plays what 
he perceives, his education is gained as rapidly as un- 
consciously, upon the firm and rational basis of ex- 
perimenting. 

Now the direction of his experimentings will pro- 
ceed from the kind of life led about him. If his 
parents happen to be interested in commercial pursuits 
and a boy hears frequent talk about " stock markets," 
banks, or marketable goods, in all probability his plays 
will take the trend toward commerce. He will " play 
store " and learn to calculate and bargain. Thoughts 
about merchandize are his counters and he makes up 
games to suit. This is not saying that his tastes will 
ultimately be colored by his childish plays, but merely 
that his self-training will be so colored. Erom too 
much familiarity he may even weary of what en- 
grosses him so early, yet some residuum may remain 
to influence him in some way, in maturity. The 
artist's child takes as naturally to the tracing of his 



IMAGINATION PLAYS 109 

fancies on paper as the acrobat's offspring to originat- 
ing new modes of tumbling; the little one who has 
been taken often to the theater goes off privately to 
rehearse some imaginary drama that has been ingen- 
iously designed from bits of remembered scenes. 

Once I discovered a child of a friend with whom 
I was stopping, sobbing and going on in a sort of happy 
hysterical frenzy, all by herself in the attic. Tact- 
fully questioned she confessed to carrying on there a 
sort of emotional performance, pieced ont from her 
little experiences at shows, and once embarked she 
eagerly went through for my benefit a miniature 
tragedy that was not without interest and climax. 
Talent for acting had shown itself in several members 
of this family, and the child in question went through 
in her 'teens, that craze for the stage which attacks 
many bright and versatile girls. However, she out- 
lived it and became a most practical housewife after 
an early marriage. 

In the household of an editorial friend a tot of four 
was found privately accumulating stacks of paper and 
big envelopes, which she frankly stated were " manu- 
sc'its " she was going to take to a publisher. " I'm 
going to write a book and sell it and then write an- 



110 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

other book, and the publisher will say, — Mis' 
Ketcham, we want as many books as you can write, 
— and I'll write him a lib'ry full of them ! " It may 
not be amiss to say that this little one also, outgrew 
the spell of propinquity, and took to other occupations 
when she grew up. 

The delicate tyranny of the higher faculties is, how- 
ever, as nothing in comparison with the craving of 
deprived bodily functions. The child of poor parents 
who is necessarily stinted in luxuries, is impelled to 
enjoy in plays the fleshly delights he sees from afar 
and envies. Nothing charms a meager little child 
whose daily food is of the commonest quality, than 
to depict to herself, as well as she can, a splendid 
mansion where servants constantly minister to the 
palate. Barmecide feasts they are, that make the 
poor infant's mouth water and her starved appetite to 
grow beyond bounds. But for the time being her vi- 
sions take her out of the suffering present into a fairy- 
land of pleasure. It is the best thing she knows. 

Dickens, the child-lover, never showed a more acute 
knowledge of the action of the infant mind than when 
he told how the " marshioness " buried in her dark 
cellar, kept herself alive by " making believe." The 



IMAGINATION PLAYS 111 

delicious punch made from bits of orange peel com- 
forted a soul that longed for luxuries as well as a 
thirsty body that must drink even wash to keep itself 
from painful sensations. Sometimes the sole allevia- 
tion to unpleasant circumstances, when he is misun- 
derstood and under-rated, is a little one's power to 
imagine himself in happier surroundings. A too ac- 
tive imagination is not always a desirable faculty; 
but the best off-set to it is the cheerful companionship 
of nice children. An introspective little one would 
best not be left too much alone. But we must re- 
member that sensitiveness goes with imagination and 
that a child ought not to be laughed at nor be sub- 
jected to the society of those who will be rough with 
his fancies and "make-believes." What are adult 
ambitions but an extension of these " make-believes " 
of childhood ! 

If the child is to get all the benefits that come from 
an unfettered use of the imagination grown people 
must refrain from teaching him too early. Eefrain 
that is, from imposing upon him their own cut-and- 
dried formulas. Their part is merely to suggest, his 
own to carry out. 

Suggestions are indispensable. They are the 



112 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

torches that light up his path, the stones from which 
he constructs his temple. Suggestions may be con- 
veyed in song, in conversation, in story ; but they are 
most effectually conveyed in example. The little one 
who lives with his parents and sees mingled with their 
daily commonplace acts something of higher thought 
and feeling, will quickly seize that invisible charm 
and become imbued with its spirit. Even in his most 
trifling acts you will find larger motives than ever stir 
the child whose moral nature is only subject to the 
development of an intentional discipline. When he 
builds houses or cars or ships they will not be only 
for himself, but for those he loves ; his pleasure will 
consist to some extent in doing things for others. 

I know this from personal experience. I have seen 
in one family a tot of three years who is perpetually 
engaged in some occupation that involves the happi- 
ness of her entire family. She is by no means spirit- 
uelle, but a healthy, happy, romping little creature 
whose experiments with things might be called " mis- 
chief " by uncomprehending people. Yet they mean 
much to her, and her friends, who love her well, and 
watch her with interest, tread softly amongst the as- 
tonishing disorder she makes, lest they should over- 



IMAGINATION PLAYS 113 

turn some arrangement that is beautiful and harmo- 
nious in her eyes. As she is perfectly unrestrained 
and confidential with every one, she explains her 
plans and acts as she goes on. This pile of dominoes 
that obstruct the doorway is a cake she is " baking 
for papa " ; this piece of paper on a chair is a pattern 
by which she intends to cut mamma a dress ; and the 
books surrounding her piano turn into a horse and 
carriage, in which she is about to take the entire 
family for a drive ! 

It is unusual for games which come strictly under 
the head of " imagination plays " to be engaged in be- 
fore a child is four or five years of age. But in 
families where children are the frequent companions 
of grown people their strong propensity for imita- 
tion will often lead to an earlier ripening of their 
dramatic powers. Nor is it undesirable that this 
should be so. Play is the natural outlet for a child's 
thoughts, and dramatic plays are the earliest develop- 
ment of a man's natural ideas. To restrain these 
movements is to drive back the child's living fancies 
into the recesses of his mind, and bring about con- 
fusion and unhappiness. Some children who are 
forced to be still and passive when they are longing 



114 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

to have relief in action, find outlet in whispering over 
stories to themselves ; but it is an unsatisfactory sub- 
stitute for dramatic action. And it is also, morally 
injurious, for the necessity of concealing one's ideas 
presently destroys the ability for fluent expression 
and brings about timidity and distrust of our friends. 

The natural instinct of a child is to draw his fam- 
ily into his plays, and until he is rebuffed and thrown 
back upon himself he greatly prefers companionship to 
solitude. Development takes place in the right way 
when a young child thinks, talks and acts, all at the 
same time. It is then, highly beneficial to him to 
feel perfect freedom when he plays, and to go to the 
limit of his impulses, in order to experience the 
proper reaction. 

In a healthy, happy child the impulse for play will 
come whenever play is the appropriate outlet for his 
energy. The ideal of life is that desire should al- 
ways precede action. Among unspoiled children it 
does. Little is gained by urging a child " to go and 
play." The suggestion may relieve us of a temporary 
burden in the matter of entertaining him, but like 
all temporary reliefs it entails future trouble. If our 
little one leaves his toys and sidles up against his 



IMAGINATION PLAYS 115 

mother in that fretful way which is so trying, he ought 
not to be repulsed. It means that his own small re- 
sources are exhausted, and that he needs a change of 
scene, a new fund of ideas or else the refreshment 
of rest and soothing from mother-love and patience. 
Periods of dulness and depression come to us all; 
but they should rarely come to a child. Nature is 
his proper guide, and herein is the advantage of the 
home nursery over which a wise mother presides, over 
any educational institution. She will let the child 
choose his own plays and carry out his own little 
plans, aiding and advising but not interfering. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Nature Studies 

" True wisdom is only an interpretation of nature. In 
nature is found all primary ideas, the principles upon 
which all knowledge depends, and the models for all the 
arts." — Marced. 

I HOPE this chapter heading does not instantly 
conjure up before the mother a vision of tire- 
some botany lessons. It is a peculiar fact that 
genuine love of Nature is rare among women, while 
there is in almost every one of them a warm and deep 
sentiment for the beautiful in art. Perhaps it is be- 
cause their initiation into the fields of science is as yet 
a novel thing, and they look upon acquaintance with 
science, even in the simpler forms, as task-work. But 
Nature is simply reality ; that which is about us from 
the first to the last moment of life, and the mind 
which contemplates a single fluttering leaf with an 
eye to its qualities approaches her inscrutable enigmas. 

Agassiz said modestly, that in a whole life-time of 

116 



NATURE STUDIES 117 

study he had only found out one fact; that one re- 
lating to the correspondence between the succession 
of fishes in geological time and the different stages of 
their growth in the egg. This was all. But it was a 
mighty fact. And what a happy, fruitful life he 
passed! Nothing to him were all the frets of hur- 
rying civilization, all the envyings, the emulations, 
the worries of man's ambitious struggle ; he was with- 
drawn from them through an absorption in the eternal 
verities. And he lived to be very old. 

That shrewd observer, Samuel Smiles, notes the 
fact that natural history studies have a peculiarly 
calming effect on the mind. Naturalists usually live 
to a great age and are remarkable for their insensibil- 
ity to the ordinary tribulations and trials of life. We 
may deduce thence a good lesson for our children: 
wean them from pettiness by turning their attention 
to interesting natural objects. If they are scolding 
the rain that breaks up some plan, show them the 
beauty of a rain-drop, poised on a blade of grass on 
the plot beneath the window. If they shrink from 
a horned caterpillar, make them look at it closely 
enough to see the singular tips, the curious colors, 
the remarkable flexibility of its waving appendages. 



118 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

If after a little scrutiny the timid child boldly takes 
the thing in his fingers, try to conceal your own aver- 
sion, if you have one, and be as diplomatic in your ad- 
miration as you would be with a friend who told a 
doubtful story at your dinner table. We all have to 
" smile and smile and be a villain still " when it 
comes to hiding natural sentiments on occasion. 

I acknowledge that instinctively I have an aversion 
to all creeping things. My spontaneous interest in 
biology begins with the four-footed beast. But when 
it was necessary, in view of the welfare of children 
that I should have a lively and absorbing interest in 
" bugs " I cultivated one. However, at this epoch, I 
found it a wise policy to accept the suggestion of a 
broad-minded educator who said that often there is 
some one near at hand who knows thoroughly the 
subject it is now desirable for the child to learn, while 
even our most earnest efforts can only make us medi- 
ocre teachers in it ; so we should call upon the natural 
teacher to help us out. 

When in the course of events it became necessary 
to have at hand an enthusiastic naturalist to help 
along the education of my children, I looked about 
and found a young girl who possessed a genuine love 



NATURE STUDIES 119 

for entomology and considerable knowledge of the 
subject. She was engaged to come to the house sev- 
eral times each week and " play with grubs and 
things " as they termed it, while I prudently kept to 
my own affairs. Yet it was essential that I partici- 
pate to some extent in the plays, in her absence, and 
a little tragedy arose from my conscientious perform- 
ance of the duty. A cocoon had been imported by 
the young teacher, to be kept until the grub should 
eat his way to the light. A charming butterfly was 
to then appear upon the scene. I was besieged with 
enquiries as to the progress of this transformation, 
and the children showed something of the spirit of 
the amateur gardener who digs up his seeds to find 
out if they are sprouting; they must continually in- 
vestigate the cocoon. Whether these zealous efforts 
interfered with the natural development of the grub 
or whether it was from some innate propensity, a per- 
vert, I do not know ; but one morning as we were look- 
ing at it the outer cuticle slowly dissolved before our 
eyes and an ugly, misshapen creature, of about five 
times the size of the gentle being we had expected, 
emerged and fell to the floor. " Why don't it fly ? 
Why don't it fly ? " cried the children ; but the thing 



120 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

only continued to drag its length along the carpet in 
such an ungraceful fashion that I could not help 
turning my eyes away. There was no doubt about 
it ; we had a monster among us ! In the end, we sum- 
moned the maid, who disposed of it by means of a 
dust-pan and brush, and it probably finished its career 
in the back yard. But the instructor on " bugs " 
was exceedingly disappointed next day, when the his- 
tory was related to her, and contracted, I fear, a 
contempt for the group that could not tolerate the 
caprice of Nature in sending forth a departure from 
the ordinary course of development. Bug monsters 
are so rare ! 

But aside from the technical knowledge of ento- 
mology or botany, which is the least part of the 
subjects after all, there is a vast field for the mother 
in the way of Nature studies, and one which no one 
else can cultivate so well. Erom the very earliest 
time she should accustom her children to the wonder- 
ful plan of progression in all the manifestations of 
life. A little private study of botany will equip her 
with enough elementary learning to enable her to pilot 
her pupils through the business of analyzing simple 
plants, and finding out their families and their gen- 



NATURE STUDIES 121 

eral structure. Thence, to the subtler idea of the un- 
folding of family relations is but a step; but how 
significant a step! To be able to tell your child, 
simply, without any shrinking or diffidence, that the 
germ of the plant you are holding in your hand is an 
egg y fertilized by pollen, carried by an accommodat- 
ing insect, and that the same principle of develop- 
ment holds throughout all creation, is to do away for- 
ever with the false nonsense that will probably be 
poured into his ears when he begins to associate with 
the children with whom he will go to school. That 
there is sex in plants, that they marry and have off- 
spring, that all the process of sucb child-bearing is 
respectable, not only in the lower plants but in the 
higher species, that there is a morality in Nature 
higher and finer than our ignorance generally allows 
us to appreciate — what a splendid lesson is there. 

As a means of awakening in the mother a sincere 
interest in the ways of plants, and of arousing genu- 
ine amusement at their singularities, I heartily recom- 
mend Grant Allen's " Story of the Plants." It is 
at once thoroughly scientific and delightfully dra- 
matic, and is more entertaining for summer reading 
than the average summer novel. Besides being very 



122 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

brief. With it as a guide I once had the gratification 
of inspiring in a rather dull girl of eighteen, during 
a summer's acquaintance, a most remarkable interest 
in biology. It was at least the beginning of a broader 
culture than she had ever been led to undertake. 

Younger persons will need to have more elementary 
instruction, and of an oral nature altogether. In- 
deed, the more a mother can hide the text-book and 
make information come from herself at first hand, the 
more vivid it will be to the child. She should " get 
up " her facts privately, and spring them forth on 
her confiding little one without quotation marks. It 
is a justifiable bit of acting, for if ever books are 
unwelcome — and they often are — they are out of 
place as garden litter. Out in the open, with grass, 
flowers and trees around " Nature studies " are easy 
and inevitable. Every instant some new interest 
arises spontaneously and one has only to respond to 
the invitation to be entertained. 

A wee maiden was taking a country walk with 
her father and chatting upon things as they attracted 
her attention, when she suddenly ended a rather long 
pause with the pensive comment — " Eve'th'ing is 
Nature — 'cept the houses ! " Which childish aphor- 



NATUKE STUDIES 123 

ism contains the truth in a nutshell. Everything 
about ns is Nature save what has been wrought by the 
hand of man. Yet there is a cunning art in Nature. 
The ant's estates, the bird's nest, the bee's cell, are 
scarcely less complicated or artistic than the Egyptian 
Pyramids or the Panama Canal. The intricate struc- 
ture of that wonderful thing, the Australian pitcher 
plant, which eats insects and sets traps, is a marvel of 
art, even though a product with which the hand of 
man has not meddled. To trace the design in Na- 
ture is something that makes intelligent children 
breathless with delight. It is not necessary for us to 
teach them to take an interest in the natural sciences ; 
it is there all ready for action. The bungling of 
the adult teacher too often destroys this instinctive 
attraction. The child does not want a mediator be- 
tween himself and the objects that fascinate him ; he 
wants to handle, taste, investigate, all for himself. 
Simple, unalienated children are as close to the great 
mother as the mites that cluster in her bosom or as was 
primitive man before he began to enjoy the luxury of 
houses. Turn a child loose in the fields or woods and 
he riots in the wealth of opportunity offered him. 
Every instant affords some new fact or suggestion. 



124 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

Yet presently lie wearies of experiments which amuse 
but do not enlighten. He seeks a key to mysteries 
and runs to his mother with questions and prayers. 
His need is his parent's opportunity. Happy for both 
if she is not unprepared to help him out. 

Science offers the principles that bind facts to- 
gether and discover for us the great why of natural 
wonders. If simply to know facts constituted educa- 
tion the country child, with free opportunity to be- 
come acquainted with the plant and animal world, 
would be much better versed in natural history than 
the city child, restricted to cabinets of curiosities and 
domestic pets. But usually their knowledge is of the 
merely utilitarian sort. They know that milk comes 
from the cow and eggs from the hen; that you must 
plant seeds in order to get vegetables ; and also, some- 
thing of the habits of their woodland neighbors — the 
birds and squirrels. But ask one of them why the 
grape-vine sends forth climbing tendrils, or the trap- 
door spider conceals her nest amid foliage, or of what 
use is the sweet, fragrant pulp surrounding the cherry 
or peach pit, and the chances are that to your ques- 
tions you will get only a vacant stare ; to the last, per- 
haps, the muttered reply, — " Good for us to eat." 



NATURE STUDIES 125 

They never think of the tree, the selfish small 
utilitarians! Selfish because they have merely been 
taught to look at everything from the point of view 
of its usefulness to men. Most of us were so taught 
before the idea became general that Nature takes as 
much care of her feeblest children as of her mightiest, 
and that she devotes all her energies to propagation, 
improvement in culture being merely an incident — 
a necessity of the great " struggle for existence." 

A few general principles are better culture for the 
child than a multitude of unrelated facts. It is cer- 
tain that the very young child is usually capable of 
grasping a great, all-embracing truth, if it is lucidly 
put before him. It is not the principle but the con- 
fusing medley of nomenclature that often surrounds 
it that is tiresome. I recollect studying for a very 
long time in my early years, a series of volumes on 
physics that were well written, so far as the presenta- 
tion of principles went, but were over-laden with that 
cumbersome scientific commentary which was deemed 
necessary in those days, and to which the teacher paid 
most of her attention. To " learn by heart " many 
names, was learning one's lessons well, in the old time 
school. And many were the dullards made by that 



126 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

system. It took me a long time to outgrow the dis- 
taste for natural science caused by the routine instruc- 
tion of my conscientious, narrow-minded teachers. 
When, in the course of a voluntarily undertaken 
course of reading, I came across Agassiz's delightfully 
clear relation of the laws of biology it was as if a 
light shone in a dark place, and a deserted cavern 
was rendered habitable to thoughts. 

Instead of finding children bored by the unfolding 
of the mysteries of life I have frequently been sur- 
prised by their insatiate thirst for knowledge when 
it is presented to them attractively. It is true that 
the world must be presented to them as a drama, where 
everything is alive and acting a part. But is it not 
so ? To seeing eyes there is no stillness in Nature, 
no death, only everlasting change. It is a dull child 
who cannot be brought to comprehend this law. And 
in so doing he makes greater progress than if he 
learned the names of twenty different plants or 
plodded for a month over some lesson in physics about 
the Ley den jar. 

Physics and chemistry may be left largely to the 
school days, unless a parent has a passion for the nat- 
ural sciences. Simple experiments are agreeable di- 



NATURE STUDIES 127 

versions, but the labor and expense involved in borne 
studies of this sort commonly render them imprac- 
ticable. Far easier are studies about animals and 
minerals, and children are always interested in zool- 
ogy, even when they only know it through the stupid- 
est of books. 

The old-time country circus, where the children 
were allowed to feed the elephants, ride the donkeys 
and get intimately acquainted with the monkeys and 
parrots were, perhaps, better schools of learning for 
zoology than those that have succeeded them. But 
" Zoos " are in nearly every city and trips to them 
within the reach of everybody. If the parent will 
take the pains to make a little preparation in advance 
for such an excursion, so as to be able to answer the 
inevitable questions about the habitats of the kanga- 
roo and the Polar bear, and not confuse the long- 
haired goats and the sheep from Australia, he will 
find a most appreciative small audience for his lec- 
ture. He may have to protect the animals from a 
too lively curiosity on the part of his zealous offspring. 
A certain little boy who was noted for his gentleness 
with animals was one day discovered deliberately kill- 
ing a June bug. To the remonstrance of his mother 



128 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

lie replied, in a cool, philosophical tone, " But, 
mamma, it is necessary. We have to find out about 
these things." To be sure. Was not his uncle a 
physician, with a hobby for beetles ? 

Unfortunately, there is no text-book ready at hand 
containing the elements of natural history in a form 
busy parents may find satisfactory for hurried con- 
sultation. Such a book is a crying need. For lack 
of it we may have to cull from many volumes. But 
in the appended bibliography there will be found the 
titles of the best that I have discovered in my re- 
searches, and some that are almost equal to the de- 
mands mothers naturally make. At least, they will 
be found very helpful, and if supplemented by real 
zeal and intelligence on the part of the parent, will be 
of the most valuable assistance in the education of 
the child in such an important branch of knowledge. 



CHAPTER IX 

Poem, Size and Number 

" All intellectual life upon our planet begins with geome- 
try."— Hill. 

JUST now it is the fashion to rate mathematics 
low. There has been so much discussion 
lately about the development of the child's per- 
sonality in language studies that the once rigid idea 
that mathematics constitute the basis of all mental 
training has been succeeded by theories that are easier 
both for teacher and pupil. As usually understood 
and taught, arithmetic, algebra and geometry are mere 
exercises for the memory. Logic enters not into them. 
So distasteful has the very name of mathematics be- 
come that to secure toleration for the amount of in- 
struction necessary in the primary grade the term 
" number lesson " has been invented. And herein 
through deferring to popular prejudice, an injustice 
has been done toward a beautiful and useful science. 

129 



130 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

Eor arithmetic is not the science of number, as 
is so often carelessly supposed, but of valuation. 
Number is merely the outward sign of the inward 
grace. Where the feeling — the apprehension of 
comparative values — is not present the glib tongue 
which employs itself in counting is as silly as a pendu- 
lum swinging backward and forward in a clock whose 
works are out of order. " Unrelated facts are not 
knowledge any more than the words of a dictionary 
are connected thoughts. " But knowledge begins the 
instant there is a dawning sense of comparison be- 
tween several things, with a view to their relative 
values. 

It rarely occurs to us how barren this world would 
be without the constantly enjoyed pleasure of making 
comparisons as to the value of different things. Much 
of our ordinary entertainment is extracted from the 
habit of drawing these comparisons. We habitually 
say, — " How much nicer, — how much prettier, — how 
much finer," is this article, or toilet, or show, than 
some other with which we put it -into opposition. 
And when some one differs from our opinion we 
doubt the justice of his standards, and possibly think 
that his taste or his judgment is deficient in accuracy. 



FORM, SIZE AND NUMBER 131 

I should say there really are no " unrelated facts." 
It is impossible to withdraw a single fact from its con- 
nections with other matters that belong to it. But the 
relation is not always apparent at first sight, and the 
tracing out of subtle associations requires considerable 
dexterity of reasoning. 

To the child each new fact is, necessarily, separate 
and distinct from what has been learned before, un- 
less we are so careful in presenting objects to him that 
the association will be natural. To some degree, this 
might be done, with respect to mathematical ideas. 
We may set out with the assumption that one of the 
earliest conceptions of the child is that of difference 
in size. He learns to look up at large objects, down 
to those that are smaller. The association with these 
instinctive movements establishes itself in his under- 
standing with the respective bulks of the things looked 
at. When the idea of form comes to him is a matter 
we cannot state much about; but probably some in- 
definite suggestions are gained with the knowledge 
that certain things roll about, as his balls, while other 
things that are differently shaped, stand still. His 
first idea of differences in shape will naturally be 
those between square and round objects. It will 



132 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

probably be some time before the less remarkable dif- 
ference that exists between oblong and square things 
is noted. Therefore, we do not wish to make him 
go out of his way to observe first the matters that 
naturally come later on; we will not suggest to the 
small child the differences existing between long and 
square things before he has remarked the related facts 
of squareness as opposed to roundness. 

And before this even, must come the idea of differ- 
ence in bulk without any connection with shape. 
Consequently, to show him that one object is larger 
than another, the two objects presented ought to be 
of similar shape. This little item, which is impor- 
tant, is seldom considered. In fact, very rarely is any 
deliberate attempt made to educate the child in pri- 
mary ideas of a mathematical nature. He is left to 
chance, and acquires his notions as they may come to 
him. And then, we wonder that mathematics are 
difficult and obscure to the school child. Sometimes 
parents teach their children " to count," believing 
that this starts them rightly on the path toward 
knowledge of arithmetic. " He can count to five, to 
ten," boasts some thoughtless parent, when the baby 
tongue has repeated the string of one, two, three. But 



FORM, SIZE AND NUMBER 133 

it is very unwise to teach the child to run over the 
names of numbers without associating the names with 
any meaning. Nor is the plan of having baby count 
objects, such as spools or pennies, any better. All 
this is artificial training, sure to disappoint our ex- 
pectations in the end. Some day when baby is display- 
ing his little accomplishment he makes sad blunders. 
He puts five before two; leaves out four altogether 
and when questioned states that three is more than 
six, and shows utter ignorance of any power of gen- 
uine counting. The words one, two and three mean 
absolutely nothing to any one until there has grown 
up in the mind a sense of quantity. When he realizes 
the distinction between a little of a thing and more of 
it, between a few objects and many of the same kind, 
he begins to grasp the great generalization implied in 
the power of measurement. 

Before we can be exact about any matter we must 
have an approximately correct impression of it — a 
general idea. Suppose a barbarian, newly landed in 
New York, were asked for his opinion as to the su- 
periority of cement over cobble-stones, for pavements ? 
Having no knowledge at all of pavements, how could 
he compare one sort with another? But if he first 



134 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

had the meaning of pavements in general explained to 
him, he might soon be prepared to enter into the ques- 
tion of their relative values. Based upon simple no- 
tions of practical worth, irrespective of vexing tempta- 
tions of contracters, such an opinion would have an 
unique veracity. 

Erom a general idea, obtained first, a clear, definite 
understanding of any situation can be deduced. Most 
people err in their beliefs about great questions be- 
cause their particular ideas come too soon; before 
the ground-plan of a generalization that is correct is 
laid. It is absurd to attempt to be exact about any- 
thing that has not been first apprehended in a gen- 
eral way. Ignorant children talk in very ridiculous 
fashion about going to war. But the child of a soldier 
of the line, who has seen a single actual battle, has 
a conception of the meaning of war that makes his 
talk strikingly different in point of details. We speak 
sometimes of " striking facts/' but we are struck by 
single facts because they confirm a general principle 
previously known. Otherwise, they would not strike 
us in the least. 

Now, the child's mind must go through the same 
mental process as that of the adult, and develop the 



FORM, SIZE AND NUMBER 135 

power of reasoning after the same mode; from gen- 
erals to particulars is the rule. He must get an in- 
definite sense of the difference between large masses 
and small masses, many objects and few objects, be- 
fore he can comprehend that there are definite and 
precise degrees of value. The loose notion must come 
before the compact one. Intelligent children take 
pleasure in comparing one thing with another. They 
love to measure and weigh articles in miniature 
scales; they continually note differences between ob- 
jects, and although their distinctions are always crude 
and sometimes absurd, they occasionally show sur- 
prising sharpness in finding points to contrast. 

A practical and feasible means of teaching the small 
child the primary mathematical notions is to furnish 
him with a well made toy scale, that will balance 
very correctly. Then, give him a few — say, six 
weights, — each one doubling the value of the other, 
that is, the first one weighing an ounce, the second 
two ounces, and so on. They will all be of the same 
shape and so will not distract his mind from the one 
object in view, which is, to discover their relations 
in weight. Weight will soon become related to size. 
After he has learned the values of his six tools, an- 



136 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

other half dozen, relatively heavier and larger, may 
be given him. With these well understood counters 
in possession, he can begin to play the game of judg- 
ing weight values, or measuring. Eirst, the mother 
may direct his attention to the fact that one weight by 
itself pulls down his scale so much ; then, that added 
weights pull down so much more. By degrees, all the 
weights being added, the little scale is weighted to 
its capacity. Then, the marvel of deducting may be 
entered upon. Eirst, a single weight removed enables 
the scale to rise slightly, another makes it still more 
buoyant ; until finally, by rapid, pleasant experiment- 
ing, the child learns the mysteries of adding and sub- 
tracting according to values, before he has been both- 
ered with the merely arbitrary names of a single num- 
ber. 

If we could only practise what we really know — 
that objects come in human understanding before their 
names ; but we concern ourselves too much with teach- 
ing the pupil the outside aspect of knowledge, and far 
too little with the natural, inner meaning of it. The 
faculty of discerning differences is closely allied to 
what is called the mathematical faculty, yet few 
people appreciate this. How many parents will ap- 



FORM, SIZE AND NUMBER 137 

plaud the child who shows readiness to repeat num- 
bers, and frowns down the " nonsense " of curiosity 
as to relative weights and sizes. The old-fashioned 
idea that " doing sums " as country children say, is 
mathematical education, still prevails among us. We 
can scarcely get ourselves to believe that a child might 
become firmly grounded in the principles of arithme- 
tic and geometry by merely being helped to interpret 
his surroundings correctly, even if he never handled 
a slate or saw a pencil. But it is, nevertheless, true. 
We speak of a thing being done with " mathematical 
exactness " when there is no fault in its proportions. 
Whenever a child is trained to notice the admirable 
proportions of a symmetrical building he is being 
educated in mathematics. When he is required to 
point out faulty measurements, to observe that one 
side of a thing is smaller than the other, that lengths 
are unequal, that an object that should be completely 
round has become flattened on one side, — all these 
points make for his accuracy and help him in the 
power of calculation. 

The two essentials to mathematical exercises are 
abstraction and generalization. Eirst the thing is ex- 
amined as a general object, and afterwards it is ex- 



138 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

amined in its relation to other objects more or less like 
itself. The child notices a particular chair in the 
room; then he observes other chairs, differing from 
the first in certain details, bnt still, enough like it to 
be classed with the order. In concentrating his at- 
tention on a single chair among several, he has un- 
consciously performed the act of abstraction, and in 
grouping several together again because of their re- 
semblance, he generalizes. 

At first all his inferences are vague and meaning- 
less. He is blindly obeying a natural instinct in 
noting his surroundings. So long as he has no use for 
the objects he sees they are as unrelated to himself as 
are the sun and moon. But the instant a purpose con- 
nected with them comes into his head they assume 
definite shape and value. Say that he wants to build 
a train with the chairs. This chair shall be the loco- 
motive — no, it is too small ; this other is larger. It 
is too large. But this other one is just large enough. 
Perhaps he asks mother if she will please move to some 
other one and let him have that chair to play with. 
" What a silly child," perhaps she returns, and chides 
him for being inconsiderate. The inventor always is 



FORM, SIZE AND NUMBEK 139 

inconsiderate. Pallisy burned up the furniture to 
keep his fires going. Small John might be required 
to bring mother another comfortable chair from some 
place, since she is requested to resign the one she oc- 
cupies. But if I were that mother I should investi- 
gate all the circumstances before I saw in the seem- 
ingly rude demand a matter for family discipline. 
The way in which a thing is done should count more 
in such cases than the thing itself. Even the child 
— if he has a well ordered plan in mind, deserves to 
have it considered, since we permit trees to be de- 
stroyed by builders of apartment houses. It takes ten 
years to grow a shade tree, and but a minute for 
mother to change from one chair to another ; 'provided 
little John positively cannot find another chair with 
exactly the proportions he requires for his locomotive. 
But have him look well first. 

How the child's senses become sharpened as he 
needs to measure things with a view to their useful- 
ness to his own plans ! As Professor McLellan justly 
observes, the child and the savage get their first ideas 
of quantity and value when they come to construct 
something out of sticks and stones. All building in- 



140 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

volves measuring, and it is through measuring that 
the idea of numbers is obtained. Which brings us to 
our point. 

Form and size, as mathematical ideas, should al- 
ways precede number. Geometry naturally comes be- 
fore arithmetic. Do not let us be satisfied with 
merely stating this point; let us insist upon it. I 
recollect that when I heard Eobert Ingersoll lecture 
once, he observed, whenever he reached a doubtful 
point in his discourse, " I'll not only prove this point ; 
I'll demonstrate it." And then he related some lit- 
tle anecdote that fixed it in his hearers' minds. The 
only anecdote that occurs to me in the connection of 
a child's apprehending size with an ease that appears 
almost instinctive, is this: A certain tot of three 
years, whose mother is quite slim and not tall, was 
sitting in the lap of the colored cook, an enormous 
personage weighing about two hundred pounds, when 
the mother called her little daughter to her. " No, 
mamma come here," was the answer. Coming to the 
kitchen door, the mother looked reproachfully at 
her offspring, and said, " Little things come to big 
things." 

" Mamma's a little thing," roguishly responded the 



FORM, SIZE AND NUMBER 141 

tot, cuddling against the ample bosom of the cook; 
" mamma come to — Yiza ! " 

There is no doubt that if left to itself the child 
begins to measure everything quite naturally, thus 
training his judgment long before any idea of number 
takes hold of his mind. Yet, for years I have vainly 
sought the primary school where this principle, now 
acknowledged in theory, is carried out in practise. 
However enlightened the teacher may be she has to 
satisfy the parents. And parents think their children 
are playing when they are handling blocks shaped into 
geometrical forms and that they are working when 
they " do sums " with numbers written out on the 
blackboard. 

But the necessity for building a shelter for himself 
from the beasts and from cold made man a reason- 
able, thinking being. Architecture is the father of 
all the sciences, and building with materials shaped 
and measured for the purpose is the operation that 
calls into play both our primitive instincts and our 
trained artistic perceptions. The little child is there- 
fore, getting his best education when he is naturally 
and unconsciously constructing houses out of blocks. 
With a box containing numerous blocks, all shapes 



142 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

and sizes, and having near by a patient, intelligent 
parent to throw in a casual word of explanation from 
time to time, the child may familiarize himself with 
the great principles of science, and with those abstract 
terms which to many persons remain dread symbols of 
mysterious quantities to the end of their lives. Ac- 
customed to hearing his blocks spoken of as cubes, 
spheres, cylinders, triangles, squares, oblongs and 
circles, these terms greet his ear as naturally as doll 
and breakfast. I recollect with what awe I heard a 
school mate, whose father was an astronomer of great 
renown on two continents, casually mention such 
frightful things as isosceles triangles. She was not 
even afraid of quaternions. As I saw her from day to 
day, going along the prosaic streets, her head slightly 
drooping, as one buried in thought, I reflected what a 
privilege was hers, in dwelling in a learned atmos- 
phere ! 

Scientific formulas are like ghosts — awful from 
a distance but harmless when investigated. The 
child who learns in the security of his home the na- 
ture of figures and the meaning of form may go to 
school bravely and defy the pedagogical rule which 
keeps pupils laboring upon three until it is thoroughly 



FORM, SIZE AND NUMBER 143 

understood and then proceed to five; by no means 
permitting any thought of ten until seven is mastered, 
and so on through all the limitations of the Grube 
method. 

At a little country school which was kept by " a 
gentlewoman " in New England, many years ago, 
there entered a bright child of eight years, who had 
learned many things of her mother. There was no 
arbitrary grading there, but the pupils were divided 
according to their ages and general abilities. Each 
morning slates were given out, with examples written 
out in beautiful figures by the conscientious teacher, 
ready to be worked out and returned to her. The 
lowest class had examples in addition, the next in 
subtraction, and so on, the highest being something 
mysterious in long division. The first day Dolly 
soberly worked her baby " sums " and nothing was 
said, excepting the usual mark for perfection. She 
observed that she had been put in the lowest class and 
burned for advancement. The next day it happened 
that a boy whose slate contained examples in subtrac- 
tion was absent ; so she managed to obtain possession 
of his slate, worked out his examples and sent up the 
slate with her own. " Dolly will be in the subtrac- 



144 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

tion class after this," announced the teacher, after she 
had examined the day's work. The week went by and 
the ambitious mite watched for another chance. It 
came soon and she did the same thing with multiplica- 
tion that she had accomplished with the lower grade of 
work ; gaining a step of promotion. The teacher was 
just enough not to keep her in the rear of a class she 
could easily keep up with. Luckily, this was not a 
modern school with hundreds of pupils. Erom the 
second to the third class in arithmetic was easy for 
the home-bred child, to whom calculating was merely 
practising a familiar art, and when, in the course of 
a month, she was able to demonstrate to her teacher 
that the " four rules " were each equally easy to her, 
and not separated by that harsh line of demarkation 
which ordinarily breaks their continuity she was 
looked upon as a phenomenon. But it was nothing 
but a natural development of a mind trained to ap- 
preciate values. 

The idea of keeping a child to one thing until he 
is well drilled in it is much the same as if we were 
to forbid him to notice the sun and stars until he had 
exhausted the subject of his nearer neighbor, the 
moon. On the contrary, let us give him broad, bold 



FORM, SIZE AND NUMBEK 145 

views from the beginning; not crowding knowledge 
upon him but furnishing information as fast as he 
shows curiosity. It is easy to teach the three-old 
architect that joining two triangles of equal size 
gives a perfect square ; that a circle cut exactly in half 
gives him two halves or semi-circles, etc. No formal 
lessons, but all done in play and as he needs the 
knowledge for his building purposes. 

In the course of conversation we should cultivate 
the child's observation of the relative size and form 
of all objects, aiming toward general correctness of 
view rather than toward accuracy in trifling details. 
It is much more important that he should really know 
what things are than that he should be able to describe 
them in set terms. The one knowledge is his own, 
the other ours. Hugo Goring, an authority upon 
psychology applied to teaching, desires that the child, 
in his early studies, shall not first learn what has been 
learned by others, but shall be led to understand what 
he has himself experienced. In this brief sentence 
is contained a great philosophy of life. 

Youth has more capacity for exactness than it is 
given credit for. Are we not sometimes surprised 
at finding a little child a stickler for truth in details ? 



146 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

With this characteristic there usually goes capacity 
for sound reasoning, and a good mathematician is 
perhaps before us. By sensible training we may lead 
him peacefully along the path that is so often made 
unnecessarily thorny. 

It is not necessary to divide all knowledge into 
small doses ; making the child add up thousands be- 
fore he subtracts two from three. With a " numeral 
frame " to help us we may give him an understand- 
ing of the four rules of arithmetic long before he 
knows what a figure is. And when he comes to deal 
with figures they will not be hateful tools of an 
obscure science, but merely the signs of what he al- 
ready knows. 



CHAPTEE X 

Mother Wit — ajst> Humor 

"We should not attempt to turn what is essentially se- 
rious into fun; that is corrupting both to taste and judg- 
ment. But to discover the funny side of things and por- 
tray it gracefully is both pleasing and instructive." — La 
Bruyere. 

POSSIBLY the famous Haroun-al-Raschid 
of Bagdad was the only monarch who really 
ever became acquainted with his subjects and 
knew them as they were. Wandering about in dis- 
guise, he jested with them, he played their games, 
he entered into their intimate companionship. Ste- 
venson gives us a revival of the Arabian Nights in his 
tales, and has brought the intrepid old fellow to life 
again in more sophisticated form. And here too, 
we see the meaning allegory of humoristic knowledge 
of mankind, and the importance of it in governing. 
It is impossible to deal with an unknown quantity in 

human nature. Even Jove was compelled to descend 

147 



148 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

from his throne in the skies to see the foibles and 
follies of mortals near by. Modern monarchs have 
exchanged their crowns for hats on ordinary occasions 
and gone about to learn the lay of their land with the 
vernacular npon their tongues and all their dignity 
put aside. And if they do not learn what they want 
the drama teaches them. " What state and power 
are impotent to achieve humor shall win." 

I think that an hour spent in play with children 
gives us better insight into their characteristics than 
many hours of study of psychology. Not that I 
depreciate a science I have furrowed over during years 
of conscientious effort after methods; but the living 
is ever better than its shadow, and the veritable child 
more enlightening than the skeleton in a book. All 
depends on the spirit we bring to the work, however. 
Unless a mother can enjoy intercourse with her chil- 
dren and be young with them, she will never under- 
stand them nor they her. The ability to drop care 
and responsibility and frolic for a little space is 
a natural talent possessed by the born teacher, who 
is also the splendid mother. It is not the pedagogue 
who is most valuable to the intellectual world but the 
one who contributes new items to the fund of knowl- 



MOTHER WIT — AND HUMOR 149 

edge about human nature. And it is not the learned 
mother who is most competent to instruct her children 
but the mother who understands them. There is 
nothing in the world that brings mother and child 
nearer together than mutual enjoyment of fun ; noth- 
ing more appreciated by the young person than that 
maternal sense of humor which can find the funny 
side of life at every turn, and color dull times with 
the prismatic hues of optimism. 

The philosopher Renan began life under austere cir- 
cumstances and his early years were full of labor and 
self-denial, but they were brightened by the joyous, 
elastic disposition of his mother, a Gascon woman who 
possessed the vivacity and buoyancy of her race, and 
who set him the example of bearing hardships with 
cheerful good-humor and hopefulness. The humble 
house at St. Gres and the little garden planted with 
fruit trees where he played with his sister can still 
be seen. From his father he inherited a dreamy, 
sensitive nature which gave him the gravity that al- 
ways distinguished him ; but it was happily balanced 
by his mother's cheerfulness, to which he believed 
himself indebted for much of his happiness in life. 
The early idea that obtained lodgment in his mind 



150 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

that life is good and effort worth while never left him. 
Probably he could have repeated in his old age the 
very jests he had heard in his infancy from those 
beloved lips. 

Who does not recollect with extreme pleasure the 
funny stories his father told at the dinner table ? Or 
perhaps it was a grandfather who was the wit, and 
made the family party merry by the hearth in the 
evening. Eor my part I would not sell for cash the 
cheerful memories of my father's old tales, with all 
their concomitant circumstances of fun and good 
times in the family circle. There was a tradition of 
a certain ancestor who had a remarkable wit, and some 
of her little stories were contributions to certain 
evenings. I recall my childish sense of loss in not 
having known her personally ! 

I have a fancy that when the inscrutable fate which 
appoints our earthly lot was busy separating good and 
bad qualities that one escaped her before she had 
placed it and so became forever free to go where it 
would. And it has chosen to go where it is most 
needed — now lightening some toilsome pathway of 
poverty and sorrow, now turning to joy the trials of 
a soul unfitted to battle with affliction — everywhere 



MOTHEE WIT — AND HUMOE 151 

drawing all eyes with delight and lightening human 
woe by an instant's laughter. Surely, humor is Na- 
ture's best gift to mortals! Blessed among women 
the mother whom it possesses, who is swayed by it so 
that she is compelled whether she will or not, to be 
drawn away from contemplation of whatever is un- 
pleasant by the irresistible propensity to see its hu- 
morous side. 

To have a keen sense of the ludicrous is not neces- 
sarily to be shallow. Some of the greatest humorists 
unite with that sprightly gift a deep tenderness and 
broad sympathy. Their lips smile at sight of an 
absurd spectacle while their eyes overflow in recog- 
nizing the pathos that is its so frequent accompani- 
ment. It is this quick perception of a situation as 
a whole, this power to see all aspects at once, that 
gives us just judgments tempered by mercy; se- 
verity lined with leniency, that acts as a saving grace 
to culprits. " Faith," said Pat, when comforted with 
the assurance of having a just judge ; " 'tis not that 
I want so much as one that'll lean a little ! " 

The gentle humor which flows like a May shower 
on some arid spot can make pleasant even the dry-as- 
dust talk about " populations " and the census reports. 



152 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

There are people who make everything dull the 
moment they touch upon it; while others render the 
same topics interesting by approaching them from a 
new point of view. And as " interest is the life of 
teaching " it is the running commentary of a piece 
of task-work that is often best remembered; the rest 
fading from the mind like a blot scratched by the 
sharp point of Time's ruthless eraser. 

Few in number are those among us whose genius 
is of this cast ; w T ho are essentially human in their 
altruism; who carry in their breasts an innocent 
merriment, infectious, enjoyable. How eagerly is 
such a person welcomed in any company ; how people 
admire him ; how little children flock about him ! A 
parent blessed with humor has about him a magnet 
that subdues rebellion and charms away ill-temper; 
that wins spontaneous affection, ensures confidence, 
and opens the path to mutual comprehension, so that 
knowledge may be imparted with complete natural- 
ness and ease, and many a thing " learned in suffer- 
ing may be taught in song." 

We all know the good mother who is zealous for 
her child's welfare, devoted and painstaking but nar- 
row and stiff and solemn; believing merriment a 



MOTHER WIT — AND HUMOR 153 

sort of absurdity and seriousness the proper course 
in life. As soon as her fledglings can travel they 
flee from her society to seek the genial atmosphere 
of some place where they can frolic and jest at their 
pleasure and never be called idiotic when they are 
inclined to be playful. They also find it difficult to 
have for her the measure of affection that her real 
worth deserves. " A good mother," says the weary 
son or daughter, " but — " a sigh completes the sen- 
tence. A little less goodness and a little more cheeri- 
ness would increase the attraction of the parent who 
moves through the nursery with a severe eye upon 
lapses from propriety and with a strange aloofness 
from the children whom she loves well but has never 
understood. 

Heaven help the dignity which is ice-bound in its 
own self -righteousness ; which is never self -forgetful, 
and loses the very best of life through a bigoted 
adherence to the one side of existence that relates 
to duty! This kind of conscientiousness, which is 
a disease of our New England blood, is slow in yield- 
ing to the remedies suggested by the science of the 
twentieth century. We could all have more sense of 
humor if we believed it a good thing to have and cul- 



154, THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

tivated it carefully instead of trampling it down. 
True humor is not coarse wit at another's expense; 
that vaudeville apishness which passes for it among 
the crowd of thoughtless amusement-seekers. It is a 
finer thing, a more delicate and lovely quality, which 
is tinctured with fancy and brightened by imagina- 
tion. What made Charles Lamb the idol of his 
circle? There were twenty others as wise, as tal- 
ented, as versatile; but not one who had his inimita- 
ble gift of drawing out from every subject the 
unnoticed trait of the pleasantly fantastic that makes 
a bon mot stick forever in the memory of the hearer. 
The few witty sayings of all great men and women 
are treasured by the world and recollected when their 
actions become involved in the mists of the past. 
Their biographers hunt for such anecdotes with 
pathetic eagerness and to find a new one is a triumph 
that brings happy tears to their eyes. The genuine 
humorist, in real life and in literature, is the veritable 
hero, beside whom the hero of melodrama is as a 
dancing jack, without any permanently interesting 
quality. The whole world is grateful to its fun- 
makers. Is the child less appreciative of the rainbow 
that relieves the gloom of work? For all mental 



MOTHER WIT — AND HUMOR 155 

work has its essential periods of gloom and dis- 
couragement; the spirit is oppressed as if the drizzle 
of an autumn afternoon settled down upon it. The 
adult, aware of the good result to follow, often gives 
out half-way. The child, to whom the future means 
scarcely anything, needs still more to have his labor 
brightened. Why should labor be rendered so hard ? 
I wish that all text-books could have some funny 
things in them; that not only history and rhetoric, 
but algebra and geography, physics and grammar, 
could be lightened and brightened by the humoristic 
quality. This is where the dull conscientiousness I 
alluded to above, comes in to discourage any attempt 
at novel departures. What would a school board 
say to a geography full of anecdotes and containing 
information running over with fun and wit % Kin- 
dergarten stuff! 

Well; up in a certain dear old garret there used 
to be heaps of ancient books, coming down from dis- 
carded family libraries ; and a little girl curious and 
eager after printed things found among other matters 
a small volume entitled " Countries of Europe/' by 
A. L. 0. E. In it there were stories about all the 
people in the world, or so it seemed to the charmed 



156 THE MOTHER m EDUCATION 

little reader, and during the hours she spent humped 
up in the garret, pursuing these old-fashioned tales, 
she learned to appreciate something of her relations 
with other races, to know the world she lived in; 
and the facts in that hook stayed by her when formal 
lessons, learned at school in dignified geographies, 
containing hideous maps full of " chief cities " and 
rivers to be placed according to tiresome rules of lo- 
cation, took flight and never came back. That book 
is lost, unhappily, and it has been out of print for 
ages, or I should certainly put it among the list of 
books to be studied by mothers despite the antiquity 
of its facts. It would show them how to make knowl- 
edge interesting, and that is better than to make it 
completely — perfectly, exact. Of a truth, there is 
no such thing as perfectly exact knowledge. All of 
it is approximately correct. Why, then, fear a little 
embroidery of interest that enhances its importance 
and keeps it fresh in the mind ? 

One should be careful not to give a child erroneous 
information. But to give him general, loose and 
somewhat indefinite ideas at first is perhaps a better 
thing than to try to impress him with certain distinct 
facts. A good general knowledge of any subject is 



MOTHER WIT — AND HUMOR 157 

an excellent preparation for the filling in of details 
later on, at school. So the mother who has the gift 
of infusing joy into her instruction is sure to have 
her instructions remembered, while the teacher's more 
formal imparting of the same subject will probably 
pass from his mind. 

One of the beauties of liveliness in teaching is that 
it sets children at their ease, banishes constraint and 
allows their minds to act freely. And the adroit 
instructor may add variations to his topic as his 
observation leads him to see the need of changes. 
We cannot develop the best characteristics of our chil- 
dren until we learn to know them well, and in order 
to do this we must meet them on their own ground, — 
see them completely at ease and without any affecta* 
tions of grown-up manners. When the child has ab- 
solutely no fear of his parents and feels free to act 
out all his little whimsical impulses without incurring 
ridicule no frolicsome kitten is so funny as the 
youngster who is not trying to be funny at all. The 
sympathetic mother sees pathos and humor posing side 
by side in the living child groups in her nursery, 
and she reads in the queer sayings and doing of her 
miniature men and women many deep, earnest pur- 



158 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

poses that throw a flash-light over ahiding aims of 
their growing natures. 

With children we may say, instead of " many a 
true word is spoken in jest " — that " many a jesting 
word is meant seriously." A child's humor is often 
merely earnestness. To understand it thoroughly 
one must he for the nonce, a child at heart. The 
mother who keeps her child at a distance, even when 
she tolerates an amount of impertinence that makes 
outsiders suppose her upon terms of rather absurd 
intimacy with him, will never be able to get into his 
inner nature as the mother who knows how to interest 
him will. Eespect never yet was inspired by the per- 
son who insisted upon receiving it, but it flows out 
spontaneously toward those whose characters make the 
claim they never think of suggesting. 

The mother who wants respect and merely that, 
will do well to keep her children at a distance and 
neither tolerate familiarities nor a frank disclosure 
of their ideas and fancies. Her amour propre will 
not then suffer. But the mother who appreciates the 
beauty and value of a close attachment between her- 
self and her younger selves, and who aims to estab- 
lish relations that neither time nor absence can 



MOTHER WIT — AND HUMOR 159 

weaken, must be prepared to make some sacrifices 
in order to attain them. She must first of all, culti- 
vate cheerfulness in her daily intercourse with them. 
Optimism is the glossary that explains hardships. 
The parent who has it ready at hand to pass on to 
the children may put formal authority by. The 
mother with a blithe and ready humor possesses a 
fascination that makes her companionship sought and 
her instructions received with avidity. And added 
to the present satisfaction of congenial relations with 
her children will be the assurance that she will dwell 
always in their memories like " the shadow of a 
great rock in a weary land." 

" Mother had the quickest sense of humor of any 
one I ever met/' said an elderly man with pride. 
And one could see that in his heart followed other 
thoughts. " How happy that mother made me, and 
how I loved her." 



CHAPTEK XI 
The Eight Method in Reading 

" It is necessary that in the impressions brought to the 
child by instruction there should be sequence^ so that the 
beginning and progress of his learning should keep pace 
with his mental development." — Pestalozzi. 

IF there is one part of education that especially 
demands individual instruction more than other 
sorts, it is instruction in the art of reading. 
Yet parents usually consider that this is the par- 
ticular function of the school. Methods have 
changed greatly since we were ourselves children and 
there may be danger of our proceeding in ways that 
are contrary to advanced theories upon the subject. 
But in truth, the schools are all merely carrying on a 
system of experiments that may succeed or may fail. 
The very same methods that are now looked upon 
with admiration may within a short time fall into 
disfavor. 

Meanwhile it is certain that many of the most 
160 



THE RIGHT METHOD IN READING 161 

brilliant persons of our generation are the products 
of what is called old-fashioned methods in education. 
So may it not be that any method is good which ef- 
fects the right results ? " Whatever policy has long 
received the sanction of the wise and good is likely 
to have some element of truth in it," said a profound 
philosopher. The belief therefore, that learning has 
an element of drudgery in it which cannot be escaped 
cannot be overturned by the rather frantic efforts of 
advanced theorists to convert primary schools into 
kindergartens. The best teacher in the world is not 
able to avoid the introduction of labor into intellectual 
work. It is well for this to be frankly admitted. 
There are dull spaces over which the child must be 
enticed by the prospect of pleasanter times to come. 
It is necessary for him to become used to a little 
hardship, since work is the law of life. But our ideal 
is to make the subject in hand more and more inter- 
esting, so that difficulties will be encountered near the 
beginning, while interest is fresh and energy at its 
highest point. Then, after weariness has begun to 
set in the encouraging suggestion may come that the 
worst is already over. Has not every one observed 
that it is always at the outset of a new thing that the 



162 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

child's courage and enterprise are at their height? 
A new suggestion is a sort of " dare " which he takes 
blindly and recklessly, poor innocent, and it is by 
working along this line of capturing a fortress by 
storm that the adroit teacher scores a success. 

Now, if we wait until a child is seven or eight 
years old to teach him how to read, or even until he 
is six, which is the period at which children who 
have no home training usually enter the primary 
class he will probably have already acquired a fear 
of the drudgery of learning the alphabet. A dull 
and lifeless way of imparting this essential knowledge 
has long since brought it into extreme disfavor. One 
of the older domestic novels contains a picture of a 
primitive country school taught by a talented young 
teacher who " wearied herself the whole afternoon 
telling Johnnie and Emma that the round letter was 
O and the crooked letter S." She probably wearied 
her small pupils almost to death also. 

To do away with this bugbear modern teachers have 
adopted the " sight reading " method. Words are 
recognized as " wholes " and when a sufficient num- 
ber of words have been recognized " reading follows." 
But spelling does not. And the kind of reading 



THE EIGHT METHOD IN READING 163 

that " follows n is a very shallow and superficial sort. 
Sight reading exercises one part of the mind exclu- 
sively, and that the one which is apt to be over- 
exercised at every point, — the memory. The system 
is good when conjoined with a knowledge of letters 
and sounds, thus enabling the child to perceive why 
certain combinations of letters form words; but not 
where he has no such basis to reason from. Spelling 
taught through " word building " is less to be banned 
as rote learning than sight reading, for it develops 
the child's reasoning powers at every step, and gives 
him material to go on indefinitely. 

But the alphabet naturally and logically takes 
precedence. in a sound knowledge of reading. And 
it may be taught to very young children in a way to 
make it exceedingly easy and agreeable. One bright 
young mother of my acquaintance devised a plan that 
must meet with the warm approbation of every one 
who tries it personally, and will doubtless succeed 
with other children as well as it did with her own. 

She realized that the natural tendency of the child 
is to carry into all activities the idea of family life; 
to make people out of inanimate things. You may 
make a drab stone fascinating to an infant by imagin- 



164 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

ing it peopled by a race of stony mites. So, instead 
of answering her little one's eager inquiries about the 
symbols on her painted blocks by a mechanical repe* 
tition of their names as letters, she made up a play 
which should familiarize the child with letters as 
individuals. 

First, she bought a large box of plain blocks, all 
shapes and sizes, such as come under the name of 
" building blocks." Then, selecting twenty-six small 
cubes, she painted the letters of the alphabet on them 
and put them all in a box by themselves. Showing 
this to the child she told him that these persons all 
belonged to one family called the Alphabet family. 
There were Mother A and twenty-five children, and 
the father, &c. who was away on a voyage and would 
not be back for some time. The child's fancy seized 
upon the idea with avidity, and on the first day he 
learned with ease, the names of the mother and her 
first four children, who were introduced by the teacher 
with due formality, in their proper sequence. Upon 
the introduction of each new member of the family 
they used the other building blocks to build him a 
house, just the shape of himself, after which they 
drew his likeness on paper, to stand in front of his 



THE EIGHT METHOD IN READING 165 

door, as his name plate. With the four letters they 
played games for an hour or so, the little one amusing 
himself alone for a long time after the mother had 
.withdrawn. She promised to resume the play the 
next day at the same hour, and then the child was 
taught the names of the two succeeding letters of 
the family. He was limited to learning two letters 
each day, so as not to eat more rapidly than he could 
digest. Every letter had a pretty tale of his adven- 
tures to relate, and in this way the child received 
an excellent training in language. Many were the 
evolutions they put the letters through; all sorts of 
dramas were enacted, and the familiar intercourse 
became so natural, that the rapidity and ease with 
which the three-year-old • child proceeded to spell was 
surprising. 

It was necessary to hold him back to prevent his 
going too fast. In twelve days he had learned the 
entire alphabet, and there was not the least apparent 
effort about it. John Burroughs' "Little Nature 
Studies " was taken up for sight reading, and I 
should be afraid to tell how quickly this child mas- 
tered its contents. In truth, he was an able child, 
with a thirst for knowledge. 



166 THE MOTHER IN" EDUCATION 

Yet children with very ordinary abilities might be 
led by similar devices to learn " to read without 
tears " as the old copy-books say. I do not recom- 
mend teaching a child to read at three or four, ex- 
cept where the desire shows itself persistently. In 
homes where the atmosphere is bookish children will 
naturally be desirous of sharing an occupation their 
elders find so agreeable, and from entreating to have 
stories told them, will advance without urging to try- 
ing to read for themselves. 

Eor some reason there was a theory in my family 
that I was to be kept from books as long as possible. 
I probably learned the letters with the aid of a nurse, 
from blocks, for they were mine by a sort of natural 
right. But my mental activity was forced to be satis- 
fied with small doses of spelling; lessons I detested, 
but took in default of any others. And when at seven 
years, I still found the printed page a closed show 
to me I took the matter in hand desperately, myself, 
and learned to read by my own efforts. I found that 
the spelling tasks had enabled me to pick out a cer- 
tain number of words in a book, and there was one 
little book that had been used to read stories from 
for my amusement until I had it almost by heart. 



THE EIGHT METHOD IN READING 167 

By dint of considerable hard labor I mastered its con- 
tents, bit by bit, and then the field was won. My 
elders thenceforth had a hard time answering my pur- 
suing inquiries, — " How do you pronounce L-i-m-b ? 
T-h-i-m-b-1-e ? " and so on. I must have been worse 
than old Pumblechook, with his dreadful lessons in 
addition to poor little Pip. When I could get no- 
body to answer me, I read on, supplying my own 
pronunciation according to the sounds of the letters. 
And some queer mistakes I make in our illogical 
language. One name in a book, Stephen, I called 
throughout the entire volume, as it was written, 
Step-hen, making two syllables of it, and thinking it 
a singular name for a man, without associating it 
in the least with the same word, spelled as I supposed, 
Steven, which was my father's name. But by digging 
my way thus through the mazes of elementary learn- 
ing I made a foundation that went rather deep into 
the soil of perseverance, and rendered me hardy, at 
least. 

Most modern children, however, require the ap- 
pearance of ease. They are impatient of long and 
difficult tasks. If we can find out any way to shorten 
the long path of learning to read it is desirable 



168 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

to do so, and there are some improvements that it 
is well to adopt. Perhaps the easiest way for the 
child to familiarize himself with printed words is 
for him to learn to recite a well-known little story 
or poem with the book in his hand. Long before 
" sight reading " was advocated this appearance of 
reading off the printed page was a little trick be- 
loved of children. Give a small child a newspaper 
and see how quickly his face will assume an absorbed 
expression as his eyes seem to follow words down a 
column, and he proudly tells you he is " reading like 
papa." Advantage may be taken of this taste to 
induce him to " read " from his picture book a se- 
lected bit of verse, printed in large letters ; gradually 
the familiar words will begin to mean something to 
him. They will change from abstractions to objects 
with histories, and instead of the slow process that 
used to go on with primer lessons, where the pictures 
really were the sole things of interest, the words 
themselves will become imbued with life. 

The importance of good elocution in reading is at 
present too little regarded. Perhaps rhetoric was 
over-done in the olden time and we are suffering 
from a reaction in its disfavor. But the mere pro- 



THE EIGHT METHOD IN READING 169 

nounciation of words is not reading; bringing to light 
the thought words carry is reading. How can that 
be accomplished if all words are pronounced in the 
same tone, with equal vehemence, and without in- 
flections ? Such exercises are the dull droning of the 
vocal apparatus only, without the accompaniment of 
the brain. 

What are words unaccompanied by thoughts, to 
any child? Mere bits of task-work, to be slid over 
and forgotten as soon as possible. But take any 
little story in prose or verse, and bring out its inner 
meaning by the right emphasis and it becomes dra- 
matic, spirited and interesting. Half a dozen sen- 
tences so read are worth as a lesson many pages gone 
over without interest in their contents. Emphasis 
rightly applied is the very soul of words, and no 
reading is comprehensible without it. Comparatively 
few people are accomplished in the fine art of read- 
ing aloud, and busy mothers usually put aside the 
idea of attempting to instruct their children in even 
the rudiments of elocution, believing a thorough 
knowledge of the subject out of their line. This is 
another thing mostly left to the school; and ordi- 
narily, very badly taught there, because by the time 



170 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

the child arrives the teacher finds all his time taken 
up with the correction of faults brought about by 
careless habits. But if mothers could be convinced 
that it is easily within their powers to give children 
excellent elementary knowledge of the use of the 
voice in reading aloud, surely they would not shirk 
a task that becomes with a little practise a real pas- 
time ? 

I can only give here the briefest outline of a short 
course of such lessons, trusting that the little volume 
in preparation on the subject 1 from which it is 
taken may be read with some interest by those who 
care to have a more thorough acquaintance with a 
beautiful art. The first business in reading is to 
bring out meaning. Previous to bringing it out we 
must discover it. There is always a leading idea in 
every sentence, or series of sentences ; the other words 
being used simply as make-weights, to carry on the 
work suggested by the chief agent. Suppose the 
mother means to have the child read a certain little 
poem aloud, both for the practise in word recognition 
and for mental improvement. She will run over the 

i Our Mother Tongue; speech and reading lessons for home 
and school practice. Florence Hull Winterburn, B.E.A. 



THE EIGHT METHOD IN HEADING 171 

verses herself, privately, and find their import, then 
tell the child what the subject is that he is going 
to read about, and suggest to him that he think about 
that while he reads. With his mind engaged with 
the more important matter he will naturally not be 
taken up with trifling details and give atrociously 
wrong emphasis by making minor words louder and 
stronger than others. Emphasis is naturally pro- 
duced in these ways : by an increase of strength in 
the voice, or by either a lowering or a rising in the 
pitch; that is, by a distinct contrast with the sur- 
rounding words. This is what is meant by bringing 
out meanings. The important word is separated from 
its companions, sometimes by a pause before and after 
it, sometimes merely by a rising or falling inflection 
of tone. 

It will be well for the mother to keep in mind, al- 
though not to bother the little child with such regula- 
tions, the three principal rules governing emphasis : 

First, that the leading idea of a new thought must 
be brought out. 

Second, that the important words that appear re- 
quire some emphasis. 

Third, that words which merely carry forward the 



172 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

thought or are explanatory, are not to be emphasized, 
but casually used, as one would deal with unimpor- 
tant words in conversation. 

This will be made clearer by analyzing a little set 
of verses. We will take an old poem, called 

Aunt Tabitha 

whose subject is the difference between girls in the 
olden time and modern girls. The words suggesting 
the leading idea are here emphasized, the others being 
merely slid along without marked inflections of the 
voice. 

" Whatever I do, and whatever I say, 
Aunt Tabitha tells me that isn't the way; 
When she was a girl (forty summers ago) 
Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so." 

Now, the tendency of the child will be to bring out 
constantly, as an important word, the name of the 
aunt, which is, however, told in the title and remains 
in the mind, so that it does not require repeated em- 
phasis. Things that have been once told and are no 
longer new, are not to be emphasized. What we are 
now interested in is what the aunt says and thinks. 
The next verse goes forward a little, bringing in the 



THE EIGHT METHOD IN READING 173 

ideas of the niece. So, the first introduction of this 
personage will require emphasis. 

" Dear aunt ! If I only would take her advice ! 
But I like my own way, and I find it so nice! 
And besides, I forget half the things I am told; 
But they will all come back to me, when I am old." 

Observe how the few emphatic words carry the entire 
meaning along, so that all the others may be slid 
over. The last verse contains the gist of the whole, 
and the child will be pleased with the roguishness of 
the implication of the aunt's absurdity. His atten- 
tion may be drawn to the meditative tone of the 
phrase, " I am thinking " and the successive emphatic 
words referring to this aunt's progenitor. 

" I am thinking, if Aunt knew so little of sin, 
What a wonder Aunt Tabitha's aunt must have been ! 
And her grand-aunt — it scares me — how shockingly sad 
That we girls of to-day are so frightfully bad ! " 

The little child of four or five enjoys scarcely any- 
thing so much as recitation ; and the period when this 
taste is at its height is the mother's opportunity to 
train his voice in speaking and reading. Let her begin 
by teaching him how to manage his breath, a point in 



174 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

which the ordinary school child is wholly at fault. 
Children are apt to waste breath by mingling it with 
their tones, producing what is called the " aspirate 
tone." Aspiration, or a half whispered tone is un- 
pleasant and irritating to the vocal organs. It arises 
often from bashfulness, and the best way to cure it 
is by exercising the voice in the " pure tone." Who- 
ever once masters this beautiful tone will not need 
much further instruction in the fine art of reading 
aloud. Management of the breath is most important ; 
and in addition to the benefit to the voice knowledge 
of correct breathing has a decided effect on the health. 
The first thing is to train the child in breathing as 
deeply as possible with his mouth closed. Then, have 
him open his mouth and draw in breath through his 
nose at the same time. Next, have him pronounce 
a sentence, letting out all the breath with the words, 
and breathe in again, entirely through his nostrils, 
while his mouth is open. After some practise he 
will acquire the difficult art of breathing entirely 
through the nose while reading, and be on the way 
toward the acquisition of the pure tone, which is 
entirely free from nasality and aspiration. 

The pure tone is one of kindness and sweetness. 



THE RIGHT METHOD IN READING 175 

Our old professor of elocution used to call it " the 
Sunday afternoon tone," with a sly hit at girls' habit 
of putting on a beautiful voice with their glad rags, 
when they expected company. Where the home at- 
mosphere is what it should be and children hear 
pleasantly modulated tones from their elders they will 
fall naturally into the use of this harmonious tone. 

Harsh, shrill notes are with children the result 
either of disease, excitement or imitation. Their 
bright, thin little voices lend themselves readily to 
depicting happy moods, and the literature we select 
for them to read should deal with agreeable incidents 
and be full of variety and interest. A poem I have 
found very attractive is " Robert of Lincoln " which 
is full of dramatic effects without tragedy. The 
little bird notes at the end of each verse may be imita- 
tive, lending additional sprightliness to recitation. 

As far as possible, let the child discover the author's 
meaning for himself. When he has learned to recog- 
nize most of the words in ordinary reading matter of 
a simple class, he may be encouraged to tell you the 
tale, just as if he were talking. This is in fact, the 
secret of good reading; to make it conversational. 
My mother was a beautiful reader, and had had fine 



176 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

training in elocution after the old method, which did 
not involve the knowledge of any rules that would en- 
able one to impart knowledge to another ; but the one 
suggestion she did make was very useful : " Always 
read just as you would talk." For ordinary reading 
there is no better rule. Get the child to make the 
meaning of something plain to you; he is to explain 
what he himself knows. And this brings us to the 
great point which is so much neglected: training in 
articulation. 

The utterance of little ones even in the best 
families, is usually thick ; the words running together 
instead of standing out separately and distinctly. 
The beauty of the English language is its distinct- 
ness, and its lack of that slurring which is a sort of 
melody in the Latin tongue but spoils our stronger 
Saxon. But beautiful pronunciation does not come 
without training. Children must be taught to shape 
their mouths to pronounce different words, some re- 
quiring the flat, some the round and others, the long 
shape. One little exercise is useful, and is a popular 
one with school-teachers, but much more beneficial 
when taught in the earlier years, before children be- 
come self-conscious. 



THE EIGHT METHOD IK READING IVY 

Have the child pronounce the three sounds " 00, 
AH, EE," with the mouth in the three different 
shapes, first in the round shape, secondly, in the 
broad shape, then in the long or flattened shape, al- 
ways taking a. deep breath before beginning and 
letting out all the air with the words. He may pro- 
nounce the three words consecutively, then backward, 
thus;— " 00, AH, EE,— EE, AH, 00." And as 
many times as he wishes, only provided that he does 
not become careless and make his mouth take a wrong 
shape. That can be easily avoided. The next thing 
to be done is to draw his attention to those words 
taking the round, the broad or the long shape of 
mouth, and train him to adjust his lips in pronouncing 
them. 

Yes, all this requires care and some time. But it 
is only one little lesson at a time, and soon over. 
What we have to do in education is to get our child 
in the way of self -training. When a mother has done 
her very best she is not responsible for the way a 
thing turns out for an offspring who neglects to profit 
by advantages that have been generously offered. 
But she will never regret the effort bestowed on any 
one of her children, even if the result is not strikingly 



178 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

successful, since no one knows where or how the seed 
sown in infancy will germinate and grow to the per- 
fect fruit, perhaps generations after. 



CHAPTER XII 
Seef-Expeession Through Drawing. 

" I wish you to be persuaded that success in your art de- 
pends almost entirely on your industry; but the industry I 
recommend is not that of the hands but of the mind." — Sir 
Joshua Reynolds. 

THE eyes, unaided by reason, give us very 
false impressions of things. Each instant 
we correct our first impressions by an 
amended idea of what is possible and probable; ac- 
curacy and certainty depending to a great degree upon 
the range of our experience. The extent to which we 
are dependent upon experience is proved by our def- 
erence to those persons who know localities, sur- 
roundings and scenes to which we are strangers. At 
sea we place little reliance upon our own vision and 
much upon the judgment of the sea-going man whose 
eyes are not bewildered by the dazzle and shimmer 
of moving waters. On mountain tops we estimate 

no distance without consulting the guide who is fa- 

179 



180 THE MOTHEK IIST EDUCATION 

miliar with the land. When in art galleries and 
cathedrals we walk softly, venturing few criticisms 
until we have heard the wisdom of better judges, and 
can adjust our understanding according to theirs. We 
know in our hearts, that our unaided senses play us 
strange tricks; that much touching, handling, meas- 
uring, must corroborate the testimony of eyes and 
ears before we dare accept what they give us as 
truth. 

And if adults are thus helpless before novel fea- 
tures of an ever changing world, how much more 
helpless are little children, whose imaginations are not 
yet controlled by reason, and who have no experience 
to fall back on as a corrective of the grotesque ! As 
soon as possible we ought to put in their hands a 
weapon with which to combat riotous fancy which con- 
stantly leads their wits astray. We must teach them 
to measure, weigh and calculate so that they may be 
able to judge with confidence in their own senses. 
We should train them to reproduce in some form, 
things they see and hear, then compare their first ideas 
with the experience of others, to get the knack of 
critical observation and the power of making a good 
judgment. 



SELF-EXPKESSION 181 

The ordinary parent usually corrects a child's 
wrong impressions by a simple contradiction of his 
mistakes. " It is not the way you think, but this 
way." Without having to exercise his mind at all, 
the young person merely turns his ideas somewhat to 
suit another point of view, and philosophically comes 
to think most things of little importance, after all. 
One way of seeing is as good as another; and saves 
trouble. There *are an astonishing number of people 
in the world whose judgment is worth nothing be- 
cause they have never been accustomed to look at 
things with a single eye to their relations with other 
things : they see what they like to see, that is all. 

Now, the best way to initiate the child in the diffi- 
cult art of judging values — without which knowl- 
edge men and women are helpless when it comes 
to dealing with business — is to let him experiment 
very early with plastic materials which he can turn 
and twist at his pleasure. The infantile pursuit of 
making mud pies is a rich experience in dexterity if 
it is played as a game of competition. Which one 
can make the pie that is roundest? One little one 
compares his pie with that of his neighbor, sees 
something to amend and shapes his bit of mud over 



182 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

again more cunningly. Sea sand offers another means 
of getting self -education in artistic values. Caves 
and houses are built and rebuilt with endless patience, 
the youthful architect continually improving on his 
methods, yet scarcely perceptibly, since sand is wil- 
ful and limited in its capacity to be manipulated. 
Snow is better, but in winter the " peptic stimulant " 
of biting wind converts all action into sport, and 
fewer pretty forms are constructed than forts. 

But the instinct of a child to manipulate some soft 
stuff, like dough or putty, leads him to chase every 
will-o'-the-wisp of opportunity and get into trouble 
with his unsympathetic family. Old time cooks were 
indulgent with this infantile frenzy and allowed a 
little space in ample kitchens and generous bits of 
cake dough; but there is very little baking at home 
nowadays, and less room for kitchen chemistry and 
the plastic arts. Sweet heaven grant that home 
kitchens and the dear home atmosphere may not be 
altogether swept out of sight by certain iconoclasts 
yclept reformers ! The children would be the losers 
by any scheme that lessened the wholesome labors of 
individual homes, whatever the advantage to their 
novelty-seeking elders. 



SELF-EXPRESSION 183 

Dough is a good material for modeling. I taught 
my own little ones to make dough dolls and animals 
before they were old enaugh to appreciate the real 
use of their craft and merely thought of eating their 
creations after baking them. But they were scarcely 
out of the kindergarten before I set up a modeling 
table, with a goodly supply of white putty, and we 
began to have great times making things. In due 
course followed a visiting teacher from the Academy 
of Design, who supervised them in their plays and 
adroitly turned games into work. Three weekly 
lessons from her with the aid of my Own small knowl- 
edge, gave us all a start so that modeling began to 
be a real delight, and we fashioned flowers, fruits and 
objects, like vases and cups and quaint boxes; making 
some very nice things and constantly gaining accuracy 
of perception and confidence in our own judgment. 
The modeling table was an experiment station where 
every one had to demonstrate his ideas. If one be- 
lieved that the vase to be modeled was of such and 
such a height and shape, he made it so, and only 
learned his mistakes after he realized that somebody 
else had worked according to a better idea and pro- 
duced better results. The referee was always Ea- 



184 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

ture ; that is, the flower or object itself, not a second- 
hand view of it through the eyes of another person. 
Erom modeling to drawing was the most natural of 
transitions. We first began to draw things we had 
shaped, and found this quite easy, familiarity hav- 
ing been gained with the forms in question through 
creating them in the rough, as it were, with clay, so 
that the finer use of the pencil seemed only pleasant 
progress. As the fanciful one of the group observed 
— she was five — " First we have the thing, and then 
we make its shadow." It was absolutely the right 
idea, for drawing is but shadowing forth reality. 
" The art of seeing nature, or in other words, the art 
of using models, is in reality the great object, the 
point to which all our studies are directed," said 
Reynolds. By preceding drawing with modeling 
these children learned to use models easily and deftly. 
Moreover, the pencil became a treasure to be appre- 
ciated, for everything had to be shaped first, draw- 
ing it being the reward of previous efforts. There 
was no tiresome reiteration of faulty pictures — 
endless chains of distorted creatures such as had been 
transferred from their baby brains to big sheets of 
brown paper in the days before they learned some- 



SELF-EXPRESSION 185 

thing of " the true and the beautiful " in Nature. 
They laughed now, at those treasured sheets of waste 
paper; yet they had served a purpose, too. Amuse- 
ment comes naturally before planned work. Prim- 
itive man must have gambled with his rough ma- 
terials for a long time before he took genuine in- 
terest in what he was accomplishing by chance. I 
believe in freedom with the pencil as with all other 
tools of art and crafts. As soon as a little child 
is old enough to keep it out of his mouth and off the 
walls, a pencil should be put in his hands to experi- 
ment with. When he tires of making aimless marks 
and begins to try to shape objects one general direc- 
tion may be given him: to try to draw everything 
just as he sees it. Don't tell him that the table has 
four legs nor that trees must be rooted in the ground ; 
let him find out these facts for himself. At first, 
doubtless, he will have groves of trees flying in the 
ambient, and clouds lying on the earth. But he will 
come soon to laughing at himself and get around to 
truth by making mistakes. Self-criticism is more 
valuable than any teaching, and a person must feel 
his own imperfections before he aspires to better 
things. I think a child of genuine sense is seldom 



186 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

satisfied with his own work, but he puts the best face 
upon it in order to be taken seriously. To be laughed 
at is a childish horror, and every one should be very 
careful not to bring this humiliation upon him. It is 
hard to realize that a little thoughtless ridicule of any 
of their first weak attempts at art may result in for- 
ever blighting the personality and originality of the 
coming man or woman. But the initial efforts of a 
mind toward independence are feeble and cowardly; 
industry is not so persistent but that any young person 
may easily be persuaded to desist from a pursuit that 
is made to appear beyond his powers. It must be 
confessed that children's little drawings tempt to 
mirth, but Mr. Sully has taught us to regard youthful 
caricatures with respect. 

Probably nothing is held in higher estimation 
now by enlightened educators than drawing; as a 
means of developing the mind. Teachers use the 
pencil constantly to illustrate their subjects, and the 
child uses it in rude but graphic fashion to reproduce 
his impressions. The aim is to train children to ob- 
serve closely and remember truthfully, and nothing 
could more admirably further this purpose than the 
habit of calling upon them to describe by a few 



SELF-EXPRESSION 187 

strokes of the pencil objects that have been brought 
to their attention. Picture making is an occupation 
natural to man in his simplest, most untaught state, 
and it is likewise o'ne of the earliest voluntary pur- 
suits of all children. 

Until a few years ago drawing was taught as an 
accomplishment, and was looked upon somewhat as- 
kance by teachers of sterner branches. The school 
boy who, like poor Tommy Traddles, was addicted to 
solacing himself after discipline by producing shoals 
of skeletons on his slate, did so at his peril; and the 
mechanical genius who simply could not resist filling 
all the paper he could borrow with engines and boats 
was restricted to that enjoyment during his recess 
only. 

In schools for girls an hour or so a week was given 
to copying the model drawings contained in Warren's 
books, and after hundreds of hours spent in this 
spirited employment the young person became expert 
enough to make a faulty copy of the drawing propped 
upon her desk, and then threw away the thing with 
relief; having conceived a real distaste for the very 
name of drawing as an art. A few years later it is 
probable that she found it impossible to comply with 



188 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

the entreaty of her little one to draw him the picture 
of a horse and wagon, or even a flower ! 

When " drawing from the round " became popular 
much was hoped from it, but here too, the free-hand 
course was a perpetual copying of something put be- 
fore pupils. They were shown what to look at and 
how to look at it: the master judged for them; they 
had no choice either as to subject or treatment; their 
faults were pointed out, and they learned to see with 
the eyes of the teacher instead of with their own. 
The result was servility in treatment and a deaden- 
ing of original power. Even the avowed purpose of 
making good artists was frustrated by this poor 
method. An observing spectator has not put it too 
strongly when he declared : — " It is the fault of all 
current systems that they limit the youthful mind to 
small inventions. All who propose to teach or learn 
art in any form should seriously consider free-hand 
as the true key to all its practise. It is a great 
stimulant to quickness of perception." 

The aim of the new education is not to make artists 
of all children but to give them command of the pencil 
as of the pen, to use as a mode of self-expression. 
The mechanical arts are closely allied to drawing, and 



SELF-EXPRESSION 189 

modeling, wood-carving and bent iron work are de- 
lightfully taught in the manual training classes that 
now follow the kindergarten in really fine schools. 
But all schools that put forth the claim to be consid- 
ered excellent have not genuine merit, and it is even 
more necessary now than it used to be before systems 
were so complicated, for parents to use great discre- 
tion in selecting schools and teachers. Even where 
the children have the privilege of attending an ideal 
kindergarten and passing on in due course to manual 
training classes, much remains to be done at home by 
the mother's instruction and encouragement. I repro- 
duce here a few paragraphs from the pen of Mrs. May 
Lillian Dean, who contributed several valuable arti- 
cles on the subject of " Handicrafts in the Home " 
to my magazine Childhood some years ago. She 
worked out a most excellent system of home instruc- 
tion for her own children which might be copied with 
advantage by other mothers. 

" A true conception of the reality of form," ob- 
serves Mrs. Dean, " can only be gained through mod- 
eling in the round. Modeling should therefore at 
least go hand in hand with, if not precede, drawing, 
in the teaching of children. Handling the clay and 



190 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

an interest in its convertibility into known forms may 
precede instruction. One little boy not yet three de- 
lights in the horses and dogs that are roughly modeled 
for him. He is too young to attempt them yet for 
himself but is beginning to show familiarity with the 
method, by altering the shape of those already made 
and mending those which meet with mishaps. 

" Modeling in the round aims at producing the ac- 
tual forms in their true relations to one another, as in 
a bust, statuette, statue or group. Modeling in relief 
aims at producing the appearance of the round ob- 
tained by preserving relatively true proportions in 
the projection or thickness above the background." 

This is, I believe, much more difficult, and properly 
comes after considerable experience has been gained 
in round modeling. Making flowers and fruit on a 
plaque of plaster is exceedingly pretty and interesting 
work, and my own little daughter produced several 
of such plaques at the age of six years, which are 
creditable to her industry and skill. 

" Clay," continues Mrs. Dean, " is the universal 
material used for modeling. The common gray clay 
which costs from two to three cents a pound, is all 
that is necessary for the purpose. It dries crumbly 



SELF-EXPRESSION 191 

and cannot be baked, but for round, bulky subjects 
such as an apple, where there are no thin edges to 
crack away, it may be allowed to dry, and will last 
until some accident happens. It is used by artists 
for work which is to be cast in plaster, and must be 
kept well moistened with water as long as the work is 
in process, and cast before it has been allowed to 
harden. The clay should be kept in a stone crock, 
so it will retain its moisture. 

" Thumbs are the best tools, but it may be necessary 
to supplement them with some small wooden tools, 
to secure effects. Poor tools cannot give satisfaction, 
so choose those of firm boxwood." 

The three or four essential small implements may 
be purchased at any art store for a trifling sum. 

" Choose bulky objects for modeling in the round, 
and for relief work subjects which are broad in char- 
acter, by which I mean surfaces not too much cut 
up. Very young children enjoy making marbles. 
They break off a piece of clay, press it between the 
first fingers and thumbs of both hands and then roll 
it round and round between the palms. No two mar- 
bles are alike and the children find a charm in the 
variety of size. The next step may be to an apple as 



192 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

a subject to be copied in clay. This may be given to 
children of six and upwards, and the lesson should be 
conducted in the following manner : Place the apple 
on the table in front of the child and a small board 
on which is a lump of clay. Then say, ( Look at 
this apple and tell me what shape it is ? ' i Kound,' 
will be the prompt reply. ' Is it quite round ? ' you 
will ask, and he will then be led to discover how and 
where it differs from a sphere and why. When the 
form has been well studied he may begin by breaking 
off a piece of clay about the size of a walnut, and then 
add smaller pieces to it until it begins to look like 
the apple. When it is nicely rounded it is better to 
hold it in the hand instead of letting it remain on 
the board. The hollows for the eye and stalk can be 
fashioned by means of the fingers, and the eye itself 
finished by the help of a small stick or tool. Eor the 
stalk a real twig is best, just poked in where it ought 
to be, after the hollow has been nicely smoothed and 
rounded by the fingers. In precisely the same way 
let the boy proceed to make clay copies of similar 
objects, — a pear, lemon, potato, musk melon, a bunch 
of three or five bananas, a bunch of grapes, and so 



SELF-EXPRESSION 193 

" Small plaster casts are very inexpensive, and good 
copies of small animals, heads in relief, profiles and 
grotesques can be bought for twenty-five cents and up- 
wards." 

Mrs. Dean most sensibly observes that continual 
comparison with one's model is necessary for good 
work, and the child should be admonished not to be 
satisfied with anything less than really good results. 
" Encourage your children always to press on, in hopes 
of better results and higher attainments." 

After some skill has been attained in modeling 
drawing naturally follows, as the modeled objects of- 
fer excellent subjects for copying. Unless the child 
is gifted with some talent in this line he will not be 
enthusiastic at first about the use of the pencil after 
the livelier practise of modeling. In that case it will 
be well not to urge him, but to win his interest by 
holding out a reward for nice work with the pencil. 
Where competition does not enter in, I believe in 
the idea of appropriate reward for hard, earnest work. 
Drawing especially, is too beautiful an art to be made 
a task ; it should be associated with pleasure. 

Violet-le-duc, one of the best modern authorities 
in this field, lays great stress upon geometry as the 



194 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

foundation for drawing. To carry on the education 
of a child in the way he suggests a parent would need 
a profound knowledge of science and art. But his 
principles are valuable and some of his exercises are 
simple enough for use in all homes. The child of six 
years — some at a younger age — may he taught to 
make cubes of paper and then to copy them; first 
singly, then all together. He can collect leaves of 
different shapes and draw them ; also, disks cut from 
a rubber tube, pressed into the form of a honeycomb, 
and he will thus learn why Nature teaches her bees 
to construct their cells in this compact form. The 
question he should constantly be led to ask is, — why 
does this thing have this particular shape instead of 
some other ? By perceiving that function is every- 
where the first consideration he will become imbued 
with the deepest truth of art, that beauty is harmony 
between inward purpose and outward form; an ex- 
pression of the perfection of these two. 

I myself, incline greatly toward the geometrical 
basis for drawing, and some of our best schools of 
design use it; but justice compels me to allude to a 
system which has much vogue in France and is en- 
dorsed by Delacroix. It is said that it enables all 



SELF-EXPRESSION 195 

parents, without understanding drawing themselves, 
to teach their children. It is the Calve method of 
drawing from memory, and this is the starting point 
of the system ; — A piece of gauze is placed over a 
cast and on the gauze a faint tracing made of the 
object beneath, exactly reproducing it. Then, this 
tracing is set up as a model and copied, the copy 
being constantly measured against the original and 
faults corrected ; the pupil learning both outline and 
perspective by this continual comparison. The third 
step is to put aside the copies and draw the object 
from memory. 

The system may do all that is claimed for it, but 
although it offers possibilities in the way of a fas- 
cinating pursuit to girls and boys of genuine artistic 
talent, I doubt its usefulness to the general student, 
and it is manifestly unsuited to children under ten 
or twelve years. Any one wishing to know more of 
the method may be referred to Madame Calve's charm- 
ing books. 

Drawing from memory is one of the most difficult 
things in the world to do. Even professional artists 
find that they must rely largely upon hasty jottings 
made upon the spot, as suggestions for pictures. 



196 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

They keep memorandum books, as most people do, but 
their artistic short-band is only comprehensible by 
themselves. Those who are not artists need to look 
closely at what they wish to recollect, for they must 
depend upon their memory to bring back details to 
them. It is an excellent corrective of superficial 
observation to sketch a scene as we think we saw it, 
and afterward return to that scene and take another 
view. It is a training both in accuracy and humility, 
for we learn how easy it is to deceive ourselves as to 
what we believe we have observed. 

The smallest child should be encouraged to try 
to use the pencil, if merely to scribble at first. Fa- 
cility in using the fingers is valuable, and if awk- 
wardness can be overcome very early so much the 
better. I think that previous to any formal instruc- 
tion little ones should be let alone to depict their 
own fanciful ideas. Sometimes they accidentally 
strike out curiously correct outlines of objects, in 
their free and spontaneous efforts. But we must keep 
in mind that the use of drawing to people in general 
is not so much to teach art ideas as to train them in 
accuracy and precision. Scientific precision results 
from habitual use of the pencil to illustrate ideas. 



SELF-EXPKESSION 197 

Photography has to some extent replaced the older 
habit of sketching scenes and countries travelers wish 
to remember, and the camera is a delightful com- 
panion on a journey. But the camera cannot snap a 
thought, and the skilful pencil can. Language can 
be loose and vague, and the listener's mind get but a 
faint conception of what is meant, but a few bold 
strokes of the pencil brings the whole matter quickly 
before one. Here is another important factor to the 
child. Finding that what he draws means just what 
it represents and not something else, he learns not 
to put down anything he does not intend to show. 
He becomes truthful, as art is truthful. Imaginative 
drawing, or romancing with the pencil is a fascinating 
pastime which sensitive children will usually indulge 
in for their personal amusement only. When joined 
with some knowledge of outline, it is useful to the 
young person, as accustoming him to depict the 
thought that possesses him, and so make it clearer to 
himself. Let the child draw at his good will and 
pleasure, without fearing that he will turn out an 
artist. If he gains mastery with the pencil he may 
turn out a man of acute common sense. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Eajrly Social Ideas 

" The most general statement that we can arrive at is that 
geography deals with men in their whole physical and so- 
cial environment. The whole man with the sum total of 
influences brought to bear upon him is the subject of geog- 
raphy." — McMurry. 

THE broad general culture which the child 
can get by right home training will have the 
great advantage of preventing a certain nar- 
rowing of his mind by the reiteration of a catalogue of 
facts that are the essential equipment of school routine. 
One of them is the insistence upon attention to im- 
mediate surroundings to the detriment of interest in 
those that are more remote, but of equal if not greater 
importance. There has come about recently a spe- 
cial kind of method of teaching geography and his- 
tory, meant — with the best intentions — to imbue 
the pupil with the sentiment of patriotism, and give 
him a practical knowledge of the earth in its com- 

198 



EARLY SOCIAL IDEAS 199 

mereial aspect ; to lead him to believe, in a word, that 
his native land is the most wonderful, unique, mar- 
velous earth country, and that his own state, his 
particular place of residence, the buildings that hap- 
pen to belong to his town, are the most engrossing 
subjects of interest that can engage him. 

Now, considering that schools are very largely 
made up of pupils of foreign origin, who should grow 
into liking for their adopted country and learn to un- 
derstand her political institutions, this policy is en- 
tirely sane and wise; but from the point of view of 
assuming that the mind of a child is naturally more 
interested in details than in generals, in what is near 
at hand than in what is far away, and consequently, 
more able to concentrate its attention on New York 
city, for instance, than on Athens or London, I think 
it is erroneous. If present day children are deficient 
in imagination and in sympathy with past civiliza- 
tions the fault lies with our excessive zeal to make 
them practical. We clip the budding wings of their 
idealism and later on, wonder why they cannot fly. 

There is an element of the Gradgrind system in 
modern schools which it is almost hopeless to attempt 
to alter at present; consequently, we must look to 



200 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

home training to correct its narrowing influence. By 
following out a course of instruction that is natural 
and in accord with methods that have been found to 
favor breadth of mind and generous culture mothers 
may fortify the characters of their children against 
a too prevalent egotism. Contrary to prevailing 
opinions I contend that to all unspoiled children the 
remote has a fascination ; that big, general ideas take 
more hold on their minds than trifling facts ; that an- 
cient history, picturesquely presented, explains the 
present to them ; that the idea of the earth as a whole 
is as acceptable as the offer of a boulevard vista, end- 
ing in a flat-iron building; and that they grasp with 
more alacrity the suggestion of a scheme of creation 
in the universe than of a spool manufactory. 

All kinds of knowledge have their time and place. 
It is an excellent plan to familiarize a child with 
every form of mechanism; to show him watch fac- 
tories, mints and banks, all the baby streams of his 
native town, mills and logging camps. The out-door 
excursions which progressive schools have substituted 
for more formal geography lessons are useful, but 
chiefly as a means of developing the child's perceptive 
faculties and memory. I doubt but that he will after 



EARLY SOCIAL IDEAS 201 

so much time spent in similar studies, lose all interest 
in geography in its larger aspect; the mind clogged 
with a multitude of details becomes unable to general- 
ize. 

Indeed, I have found that some very bright young 
persons, graduates of our best high schools, have an 
intimate knowledge of many matters that have never, 
in the course of my life, had any bearing on sociology 
as I know it, but they have the vaguest ideas about 
the people of eastern lands and could not tell you, 
to save them, what is the chief city of Poland or who 
Zoroaster was. Not material items, of course, but 
sample facts of their lack of interest in what has not 
come under their immediate observation. That is, 
their understandings are restricted ; their sympathies 
contracted to what they have been taught to consider 
useful. It does not matter to them who founded 
Carthage; but it is exciting that Bryan refuses to 
disclose his views on the Mexican situation. Again, 
politics have their right and proper place ; the privi- 
lege of hearing the daily news discoursed in the home 
is enlightening and edifying ; but all this is not geog- 
raphy in its higher aspect. 

Macaulay declared — " All the triumphs of truth 



202 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

and genius over prejudice and power, in every coun- 
try and every age, have been the work of Athens." 
Is it not something to be able to trace back to its 
source the forces that have molded civilizations and 
developed modern intelligence? Is not the WHY 
of life more important than the mere IS ? The child 
would say, if he could explain, that it is more impor- 
tant ; and to him much more deeply interesting. He 
will not be able to help learning, by mere propinquity, 
most of the facts about his immediate environment 
that are essential to him; when he goes to school he 
will be obliged to study all these material things. 
But probably he will scarcely hear the name of Athens 
or of Mesopotamia, the cradle of the race, for many 
long years, until he is far along in his course, and 
his early zeal for the picturesque features of history 
has changed into a jaded dislike of everything that 
does not help him to pass his "exams." It is to be 
able to pass " exams " after all, and not to gain cul- 
ture, that the child studies at school. And after 
he has passed them, what then ? " Examinations," 
said Guyot, "means permission to forget." 

Will not the mother see to it that her child, likely 
to starve away from home, for opportunity to know 



EARLY SOCIAL IDEAS 203 

mankind in his social relations with the universe, 
gets, early in his career, nourishment for his natural 
interest in his race? The awakening of the feeling 
of kinship with mankind, the pleasure of discovering 
the beginning of things, as revealed in ancient history, 
even so far back as the story of the wanderings of the 
Israelites in the wilderness, and the satisfaction of 
comprehending something of the bigness of the earth, 
will be owing to her. Warm and living from his 
mother's lips fall those suggestive words that are 
to make the basis of all the child's knowledge of 
the richest of the sciences — sociology. From her 
he learns to love or to hate mankind; to become in- 
terested in others, or to grow wrapped in himself, in- 
different to humanity. How powerful then, is her 
influence over his future ! Upon her intelligence and 
kindness depend to a large extent, the attitude he 
will maintain toward people and to the future as 
well as the past. No other study is so intimately 
connected with family life as geography, including 
its correlative, history of races ; no other so essentially 
the province of parents. 

What an incomparable advantage it is to a child to 
hear from his father's lips tales of his forefathers, 



204 THE MOTHEE IIST EDUCATION 

when the country was young! The innate desire to 
grasp some spot on earth as belonging to and identi- 
fied with one's own family, is thus satisfied. Here 
our grandsire cleared the forest and built his house, 
here his sons hunted bears and defended themselves 
against the revengeful Indians. Proud and happy 
are the small descendants of the early settlers when 
later on, they come across the names of Kevolutionary 
heroes that they knew as ancestors. But with finer 
altruism unperverted child nature thrills with joy in 
the contemplation of greatness wherever exhibited. 
It needs only the right touch to set flowing the springs 
of enthusiasm and sympathy. 

Let the mother read the page of Greek history 
which tells of the heroic Spartan boy silent and smil- 
ing under pain of the foxes' bite and see if it is not a 
salutary lesson in endurance. Let her dwell upon 
the dangers and difficulties overcome by the early set- 
tlers of our land, and point out how all our ease and 
prosperity is built upon their wise and courageous 
plans. But do not neglect to tell them that when 
America was fighting for her freedom it was not her 
mother country she was fighting but the perverted 
laws of England's selfish rulers. The best and most 



EARLY SOCIAL IDEAS 205 

devoted Englishmen were friends of their American 
brothers who sought to carry out in the new land the 
noble ideal of Anglo-Saxon government. It will 
charm the children to learn that our New England 
town meetings only repeated the " folk-meet " of old 
Britain ; that even the dissimilar custom of our south- 
ern states merely carried out the newer ways of the 
mother country in their different idea of parish and 
county government. The cultivation of this feeling 
of inter-relationship of the nations of the world, while 
starting him out in a broad view of life, will in no 
wise lessen his love for his own country, any more 
than knowing that he has uncles and aunts and grand- 
parents and cousins of all degrees of removal lessen 
his affection for his father and mother. 

Women will need to renew their knowledge of 
general history a little in order to be prepared to 
answer the eager questions of their children about all 
the interesting facts suggested by such studies, but 
a short course of reading should be all that is neces- 
sary, for the chief thing is to give the young mind 
principles and ideas to work on; the facts can be 
studied out later on. The history of the world's de- 
velopment is a wondrous story, full of romance and 



206 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

excitement, if presented from the standpoint of evo- 
lution. I am not at all certain about the moving 
picture shows being the best sources of information 
as to the habits of the early cave-dwellers. But I do 
know that Sir John Lubbock's tiny book on primitive 
man is valuable and appropriate as nursery lore. 
And then, apart from all religious signification, what 
is more extraordinary and impressive than certain 
portions of the Old Testament, to bring before the im- 
agination realization of the early struggles of man- 
kind ? Erom that to the beautifully simplified tales 
of Herodotus, taking in a slight reference to crude 
forms of Pantheism and idol-worship, is but a natural 
step. " History is philosophy teaching by ex- 
amples," and also, it is the purest lesson in the broad 
religion of humanity that we ever get. I am not so 
zealous an advocate of biography as are some educat- 
ors; to me it appears that a single individual, taken 
out from his environment and into the lime-light, 
sheds his racial relations. Absorbing interest in per- 
sonalities is something not to be too much encouraged 
in children. They have that by instinct. We 
should constantly have for an aim the lifting them 
out of the narrowness ; the extending of their limita- 



EARLY SOCIAL IDEAS 207 

tions of view and opinion. That is the especial rea- 
son for beginning the study of geography with refer- 
ence to astronomy rather than to the most adjacent 
canal. The child who is early habituated to look 
up rather than down, for his insight into reasons for 
existing things, who is early trained to conceive of 
design in the universe, beyond the scope of that ma- 
terial government which proscribes, prohibits and 
commands matters relating to parks and buildings, 
will never get mistaken notions of God as a gigantic 
policeman; nor have a contempt for those who wear 
different complexions, outside or within. 

The great lesson of history is that of tolerance and 
love for all mankind. And geography merely ex- 
plains its sister science, and makes concrete its great 
principles. Nothing better has been said about edu- 
cation than the saying of Herbart, the most incorrigi- 
ble idealist, as he was the most practical of tutors: 
" The final aim of instruction is morality. But the 
nearer aim which instruction in particular must set 
before itself in order to reach the final one is, Many- 
sidedness of interest." 

In its variety of interest geography and history 
are unsurpassed. I speak of them together, for they 



208 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

are one and inseparable. One cannot think of a be- 
ing without a habitat; nor of a habitat without a 
possible creature belonging to it. If, as the baby said, 
" Everything is Nature excepting the houses/' we 
may aver that everything is geography excepting 
what is history. Place and time are all of living. 

How early should we begin to teach the child geog- 
raphy and history ? One authority says, at the end 
of the first year ! It must be something then, as our 
French cousins express it, that " teaches itself." But 
the authority in question merely meant that the 
mother may then begin to tell Grimm's household 
tales to the baby. That is very well, but I cannot 
exactly agree with this writer in calling fairy tales 
real history. They have their place, but the first 
strong impression upon the child's tender mind should 
be made with sturdier stuff. Perhaps with stories 
from the classics. The Odysseus may be tried upon 
the child of four or five, if parents are prepared to 
meet all the questions which will assail them about 
the heathen gods. The natural method is to begin 
with primitive man and with the earth as it was in 
his day. It has some difficulties, in the way of 
geographical description, but they may be easily over- 



EARLY SOCIAL IDEAS 209 

come by avoiding detailed relations. Make the story 
anecdotal ; continually bringing in unexpected bits of 
odd lore, such as can be gleaned from any good nat- 
iiral history, and which serve to fasten the hearer's 
mind on the subject. Recollecting the illustration 
will help him to recall the fact. I think we have 
to wrap up almost every idea that is not immediately 
related to our own interests, in sugar. The most ac- 
complished preacher sweetens his sermon with illus- 
tration; the successful lecturer does not despise the 
funny story that hits the mark. And an audience 
goes away pleased with the wit of a lecturer when it 
would otherwise be indifferent to the wisdom. 

As a matter of fact, the earlier lessons in geography 
begin in the kindergarten; at that time when little 
ones puddle in the sand, building roads and rivers 
and mock cities. They get concrete notions then 
which may be supplemented when they leave kind- 
ergarten to spend several intervening years at home 
under their mother's training, before returning to 
an advanced grade of school. At four or five years 
they can be instructed without formal teaching, by 
stories and games, and especially by conversation. 
Trumbull, who wrote an interesting treatise upon 



210 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

training the mind in infancy, says : " It is by conver- 
sation upon actual objects and feelings that the parent 
first calls forth the glimmering intelligence of the 
child. By this method alone it is possible to give the 
child a stimulus to attention; for it interposes noth- 
ing between the child and the living voice of his in- 
structor to prevent the full play of that mutual sym- 
pathy which is the very breath of school life." 

It is astonishing how much information can be im- 
parted to children simply by conversation. The 
privilege of being admitted to the family circle, when 
by good fortune it happens to be composed of culti- 
vated persons who have had considerable experience, 
is an inestimable piece of luck for the child. Such 
bare, cold facts as the habits of the people in Alaska 
or India take on vivid interest when coming fresh 
from the lips of a traveled uncle or cousin; a single 
curious occurrence that may have happened to them 
suffices to fix a dozen correlative circumstances that 
might have otherwise never been learned. Every- 
thing that can be learned outside of books is a boon. 
That mother is wise who reads for herself and talks 
out with her children what she has studied for their 
benefit. 



EARLY SOCIAL IDEAS 211 

I believe in little ones having a sand pile out in 
the back yard, not only for play but for educational 
purposes, but every one has not a back yard, nowa- 
days. A sand table in the kitchen or nursery an- 
swers the purpose, and may be used to illustrate many 
ideas gleaned from the talks on geography and his- 
tory. The child must be taught the points of the 
compass sometime; the sooner the better. He must 
learn the relation of the sun and moon to the earth, 
and why not let him learn while the fun of represent- 
ing these sons and daughters of the universe affords 
him spontaneous amusement % 

A little collection of minerals and foreign curiosi- 
ties is valuable as a means of inspiring interest in 
strange lands and people. What the child can see 
and handle has an actual importance to him, yet never 
should there be neglected the truth that the concrete 
is not the whole thing to any natural child ; he craves, 
as a lover the moonlight, an artist the sight of purple 
clouds, the atmosphere of fairyland thrown as a glis- 
tening veil over the too bald facts of the near-by 
world. Romance in history is eagerly welcomed by 
every intelligent adult and it is received with enthu- 
siasm by children. Since it is so human to crave the 



212 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

unusual and wonderful it is well that there is so much 
of both iu Nature and life. We have only to find 
and appropriate it. The gift of finding it does not 
belong to all; but even the prosaic woman may cul- 
tivate in herself something of fancy and liveliness so 
that her instructions may not be flat and common- 
place. A few visits to the best primary schools will 
give her food for thought, and furnish suggestions 
that she can enlarge upon. I attended a geography 
lesson recently given in one of the finest schools of 
New York by a talented young teacher. It was rapid 
and brilliant in its transitions as a scene from vaude- 
ville. Her enthusiasm carried the class along in- 
terested and eager to the end. Like a trained actress 
she was fully up to her part and the pupils had little 
more to do than follow her line of thought. Every- 
thing was made beautifully clear and facts were 
dovetailed into each other in a way to excite my ad- 
miration, when I recalled certain wearisome hours 
once spent in hunting up obscure towns on badly 
printed maps and boundaries that were utterly useless 
as knowledge and related to nothing elsa But — not 
long afterward, having occasion to be with several of 
these same young pupils and converse with them 



EARLY SOCIAL IDEAS 213 

about some of the things contained in that brilliant 
lesson I found them singularly vacant of all ideas on 
the subject. The whole thing had passed, like a 
dream. I think the reason was that they were merely 
passive spectators at a show. They had no part to 
perform, no active w r ork to arouse their energies. It 
is not by tail's to pupils but by conversation with them 
that the best results are effected. And here is one 
decided advantage of home teaching. It is not 
formal ; it allows scope for that give-and-take of facts 
and fancy which not only interest at the time but be- 
come associated with some finer feelings which have 
the faculty of permanent life. 

In her little geography lessons the mother should 
always weave in some story that will serve to show 
up the background of an essential fact. The salient 
features should be illustrated so that the child cannot 
think of the kite without glancing also at its tail. 
Literature teems with books written for children 
about strange lands and people. Du Chaillu's books 
are fine, Kipling's Jungle Books charming and " The 
World and Its People " nearly all that can be desired. 
But there are in every good public library quantities 
of smaller volumes, specializing places and races, 



214 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION" 

which the mother can readily run through previous to 
her general talks about certain countries. History 
makes a running accompaniment to geography les- 
sons, and cannot be left out. It is always wise to 
strike while the interest of the child is fresh in a 
particular topic and give him all that he asks for. 
Avoid needless details, especially those that lead away 
from the broader side of the subject. I think that 
the child is perhaps, to be rather than the teacher, 
the leader in selecting his material. At least, his 
especial interest in a particular thing may be taken 
as a guide. Eor instance, if there has chanced to be 
a conversation at the dinner table the day previous, 
alluding to the Arabian mode of traveling, is there 
any reason why the next day's lesson may not hinge 
upon that topic? As well Arabia as China or the 
state of Kansas. Geography may be discursive and 
jump all over the known world at an instant's notice. 
The important thing is that the little pupil learn the 
facts that he wants then and there. That is the 
knowledge that will stay by him longest. Eirst 
arouse his interest, or if it has already been accident- 
ally aroused, then follow up his awakened enthusiasm. 
Dear me, — an aroused enthusiasm is a very valu- 



EARLY SOCIAL IDEAS 215 

able thing, and not to be neglected! How many 
weary college professors would give anything for that 
spark of genuine interest in a subject under discussion 
which it is the happier fortune of the magnetic mother 
to strike out without much effort. 

It is not easy to suggest anything like a formal 
schedule for lessons in geography at home. Each 
mother can best lay out her own plan, according to 
her general knowledge and her children's needs. But 
she may put aside diffidence and hesitation and go 
on boldly with this work, because it affords her the 
largest latitude. Probably she will accomplish most 
when she thinks to do least. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Children's Literary Life 

" Education is not an apprenticeship to a trade ; it is the 
culture of moral and intellectual forces in the individual 
and in the race." — <Fouillet. 

AN" extraordinary instance of what can be done 
by self-training, without the assistance of 
schools has just come under my notice. A 
young woman whom unfortunate family circum- 
stances had caused to " tumble up " rather than to 
be rightly and regularly educated, passed her college 
entrance examinations with remarkable eclat, with- 
out any other preparation than her own earnest ef- 
forts could achieve. By pouring over elementary 
grammars and text books she gained enough knowl- 
edge of their contents in a single month to supplement 
the lack of years of consecutive study, and after hav- 
ing been but two years at school during the whole 

of her life she entered college and made all her terms 

216 



CHILDREN'S LITERARY LIFE 217 

without any one suspecting the lack of systematic 
training that had preceded this final course. 

This is not an example to be held up for emula- 
tion. It merely shows what concentration and ear- 
nestness can do, and incidentally, how much time is 
ordinarily wasted in long years of " college prepara- 
tory " reading. The girl in question came of a liter- 
ary family ; books were her playthings from infancy 
and she had absorbed the contents of a library with- 
out any formal study. Her mental energy was of a 
high order and she brought to each subject she at- 
tacked the ripe faculty of judgment and a memory 
not worn out by long years of drudging over unim- 
portant details. " It is intellectual power that is 
transmitted from one generation to another," observed 
a French critic, " and not the knowledge acquired." 
But to all intents and purposes the inheritance of 
power is even better than a heritage of mere learning, 
since the important factor is undiminished energy, 
not out-of-date facts about living. 

" Browsing in a library " did for Oliver Wendell 
Holmes what his Alma Mater could scarcely have ac- 
complished alone. It gave him an unquenchable love 
of literature, apart from the mere technicality of book 



218 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

work. And the two things are very different. The 
child who grows up looking npon books as things con- 
cealing lessons, who hears of Shakespeare and Tenny- 
son for the first time from the lips of his teachers ac- 
companied with admonishment about strict attention 
to the notes at the end of the volume, and who reads 
with an eye to examinations ; gets almost none of the 
beauty out of the poems and less of the moral worth. 
But if he has been familiar with these poems from 
his earlier years, and learned to love them for their 
own sake, neither " notes " nor questions can dull his 
interest in them. And he will probably be in need of 
no such spur ; where culture has entered into the blood 
medicaments have no work to do. 

I have often been surprised at the slight knowledge 
average girls of the high school age have of general 
literature and how little their cursory reading helps 
out their course in the college preparatory studies. 
Between the English classics and what they usually 
call interesting books, obtained from the libraries and 
eagerly devoured for amusement, there is an immense 
gap. On the one side all the wealth of our rich lit- 
erature, and on the other a sea of trash. No wonder 
that the business of reading the books required for 



CHILDREN'S LITERARY LIFE 219 

college is considered a heavy task, since there is so 
little preliminary training at home. In a normal 
education nearly all that is now " required " and 
" crammed " should have been slowly and uncon- 
sciously acquired in the course of a childhood passed 
in the atmosphere of hooks. Where the habit of re- 
ferring to dictionary and encyclopedia to help out in 
difficulties has been the rule from infancy and where 
conversation in the home has been intelligent, the 
child does not have to be taught by his school teacher 
how to learn, and scarcely what to learn. When his 
interest in the subject on hand has once been excited 
he will work without needing to be driven along the 
path under the lash of a threatened " examination." 
He will work because he wants to know. And the 
only knowledge that stays by us is that which has 
been gained to satisfy our curiosity. 

There are children who have an honest indifference 
to books, but want to know what is useful and nec- 
essary for their occupations. They will read when 
they want to find out facts bearing upon pursuits that 
interest them, such as machinery, electricity or some 
craft, but their enjoyment is in the fact mastered, not 
in the way it is presented. Books are their servants, 



220 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

not their friends. That they thus miss the most in- 
tense pleasure in life is not a distress to such practical 
temperaments: frank, shrewd, bustling minds are 
these, to whom the universe is a mechanism and 
themselves mechanics. They are usually cheerful, 
insensible and self-satisfied, but not sympathetic nor 
winsome. Dearer by far is the creature who with all 
the faults, perhaps, of frequent impetuosity and in- 
consistency yet unites to capacity for action an en- 
thusiasm for the ideal. Such an one will be esti- 
mable as a man, adorable as a woman and as a child 
at once perplexing and tantalizing, satisfactory and 
attractive. 

The natural child has a vein of romance in him 
as the wild flower has a faint woodsy scent, unlike 
the perfume which is cultivated in garden blooms. 
His fancy dwells in a world where beauty is a right 
and love the law ; he revels in the impossible, believes 
devoutly in the improbable and fixes his ambitions 
high above the power of mortal attainment. But if 
he did not, if he simply desired what is easy and 
common, he would win less from life than even the 
average man and woman do. It is by aiming high 



CHILDKEN'S LITEEARY LIFE 221 

that we get a little nearer a lofty mark than if we 
followed the level of our understanding. 

Between the simplest child and the great genius is 
a natural sympathy and attraction. " And still to 
childhood's sweet refrain the heart of genius turns," 
sang Longfellow. The mind that is passionately sin- 
cere strikes fire from the child nature. Nothing is 
so repellant to it as an affectation. Eew grown peo- 
ple know what literature they like until they have 
been told by somebody they respect what they ought 
to like. Their admiration or disapproval results from 
a deliberate deference to rules and standards, or, in 
the case of the uneducated, from that emotional stam- 
pede which draws an entire mass onward after a 
leader. 

But children receive from their first acquaintance 
with a book the effect the author intended, free from 
the prejudice of contemporary opinion of its worth. 
The ideas they may form have the sincerity of a con- 
viction reached by independent reasoning; more re- 
liable than the impressions of adults who rarely ap- 
proach a book with unbiased minds. And not only 
will an unsophisticated child pass judgment upon an 



222; THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

author according to Lis own impressions about him, 
but he will state these in a straightforward manner. 
He makes no apologies or explanations on finding a 
famous writer dull or a popular idol unnatural. It is 
instructive to hear the candid criticisms of a young, 
unspoiled mind, but an understanding which is wholly 
natural in its processes is not by any means character- 
istic of all children. Although there is a period in 
the life of every child when he is intellectually 
honest it is often brief ; cut short by his introduction 
to school. Here the sharp edge of originality quickly 
grinds away against the machine constructed to turn 
individualities into averages. 

So quick and sure is the change under school dis- 
cipline from impulsive frankness to calculated effects, 
that I believe the data recently contributed by school 
libraries concerning children's literary tastes can 
scarcely be considered good evidence of their natural 
inclinations. It is the product of a cultivated soil, 
not a spontaneous growth. And the determination 
to accept these contributions as proofs of a child's 
mental bias reveals the prejudice in favor of engraft- 
ing adult opinions upon the tender shoots of young 
instinct which is constantly leading us away from a 



CHILDREN'S LITERARY LIFE 223 

real understanding of child nature. We cannot as- 
certain what a child thinks by starting ont in our 
inquiry with a fixed idea of what he ought to think. 
Little is gained indeed, by attention to his purely 
mental processes even when they are honestly studied. 
We gain more by considering his emotional expres- 
sions. 

I believe that every normal child has an instinctive 
appreciation of the good and the beautiful at least 
equal to the guiding light of our own adult experience. 
There is in fact, a curious likeness between the pure 
impulse of a simple understanding and the aspiration 
of a mind broadly cultured. A little child's estimate 
of literature which is at all within the realm of his 
comprehension is usually more than respectable; it 
is often acute, searching, just. What he likes is apt 
to have some claim to excellence, even if of a simple 
kind. And his dislike for complications closely re- 
sembles the preferences of truly esthetic minds for 
something that touches the heart. 

Whoever will take the trouble to win the confidence 
of a child who is just beginning to get an acquaint- 
ance with literature, chiefly as yet, through having 
stories read to him, will probably find some positive 



224, THE MOTHER IS EDUCATION 

inclinations already aroused. Out of a dozen books 
one will be eagerly praised and others listened to with 
indifference. And although this indication of prefer- 
ence or aversion may seem like a caprice, study of the 
child's tastes in other matters will show that he has 
reasons for his criticisms. Cold, somber or subtle 
things do not attract him. It is his part, as a reader 
or listener, to respond, not to dig deep for hidden 
meanings, and art may ask much from his feelings but 
no new effort from his mind. The dividing line be- 
twixt pain and pleasure is much sharper in youth 
than in maturity, and clearer, truer. Work is called 
work and play is known as play. A book that de- 
mands hard thinking cannot delude infantile fancy 
by any over-lapping pleasantry above dulness. The 
demand a child makes of a story is that it shall have 
vitality, warmth that can kindle interest. Humor, 
pathos or a lively bit of talk stir him more than older 
readers because his susceptibility has not been dulled 
by abuse. 

There are children, I am told, who take a kind of 
pleasure in tickling their ears with the sound of 
rhythmical phrases ; a baby of two years who listened 
with delight to Tennyson's " Sweet and Low," and 



CHILDREN'S LITERARY LIFE 225 

other precocious mites who sigh over " Thanatopsis," 
out these are rare infants. Most intelligent young peo- 
ple under a dozen years, when childish taste begins to 
change, have a hunger for what is vivid and present; 
choosing, if one may so phrase it, the legs of plain 
prose, not the wings of verse ; liking rhyme very well 
but insisting on the story. 

Eolk lore makes no mistake and is permanently 
satisfying. " Mother Goose " holds her place in our 
nursery because in such thrilling narratives as " Lit- 
tle Jack Horner " and " Mary and the Lamb " there 
is an immediate answer to the child's wish for reality. 
A living person with an identifying name is at once 
projected on his attention. He is given a playmate. 
Then there is something given him to do that is both 
curious and interesting; something one would not 
mind doing one's self if the chance offered. The 
laugh comes with the discomfiture of somebody or 
something that is not especially cared for. Favor- 
ites must be protected and extricated from their dif- 
ficulties before the tale ends, if there is to be peace. 

There is a natural difference between the tastes of 
boys and girls. Boys want the excitement strong 
and sustained; girls prefer something more subtle. 



226 THE MOTHER IE" EDUCATION 

They would have a heroine continually doing agree- 
able little things, like Miss Alcott's " Jo " who is, I 
believe, the most popular character in any book writ- 
ten for children. She is so altogether human ; spicy 
yet high-minded, and above all, impulsive, like them- 
selves. If we would get at the secret of what gives 
the charm to character I think it is this : the showing 
of lively impulse. A real child is always swayed by 
caprices, stopping scarcely one time out of a hundred 
to calculate and study consequences, and if he avoids 
all dangers it is after personal experiences has taught 
him what they mean. When an author presents a 
cool, far-sighted young creature who pauses before 
every attractive caper to decide whether he will get 
his feet wet or lose his chance of getting to heaven, 
one cannot blame a sensible reader for throwing down 
the book. 

There are bits in some novels that children recog- 
nize as faithful paintings and like better than any tale 
written down to their understanding. Give them the 
school day experiences of Jane Eyre, the chapter from 
" The Caxtons " about Pisistratus and his flower pot, 
or that picturesque and too little known genre bit 
from Mrs. Stowe's " Poganuc People " where Dolly 



CHILDREN'S LITERARY LIFE 227 

goes to the illumination, if you would learn whether 
children appreciate excellence of description. Dick- 
ens' stories about " Poor Jo," Harry Walmers, Jr., 
and Little Em'ly, pleasantly narrated in the volume 
brought out by Dickens' daughter should be in the 
child's library. Every well read woman can how- 
ever, make appropriate selections from the best au- 
thors to suit the taste of her little hearers. It is one 
of a mother's privileges to introduce her children in 
this manner to what is best in literature and not send 
them forth utterly undeveloped, to have their opinions 
formed by any teacher into whose charge they may 
happen to fall. " Education is rescuing children 
from the play of chance." 

Old books, especially those meant for adults, con- 
tain treasures not to be found on modern juvenile book 
shelves. Indeed, the majority of books written for 
children are an affront to their taste. They are 
mostly fantastic, exaggerated and lacking in a true 
perception of child nature. They deal with life from 
the point of view of the adult trying to seem young, 
and have a sort of mocking humor that teases and re- 
volts. An unsophisticated child dislikes magicians 
and goblins who talk satirically, animals tbat 



228 THE MOTHER IJST EDUCATION 

philosophize, and young persons who are made to 
pose for the purpose of acting out the author's idea. 
To succeed with them a writer must be sincere and 
have no ulterior object in view. And this is why 
the child characters wrought by the masters strike the 
chord of youthful sympathy. They are usually writ- 
ten in the author's best and most earnest vein. 
When an author presents his hero or heroine as an 
infant he knows that he works to win or lose all. If 
he does not succeed in making him live all is over. 
We may waste one perusal on his book but we will 
not return to it. If readers universally abided by 
their better impulses there would be a great weeding 
out in our literary fields. 

Mrs. Wiggins, who has done so much to protect 
children from misinterpretation, says : — " One of 
the vices of to-day is that we are publishing too many 
books for young people. The child's attention is be- 
ing diverted from the best channels by the newspaper 
interest which the schools require. We are envelop- 
ing rather than developing the young mind. Here 
is my educational creed : Provide the best conditions 
for mental growth and then let the child do the 
growing. " 



CHILDREN'S LITERARY LIFE 229 

This eminent author was one of the children who 
" browsed in a library " ; reading in childhood such 
books as " Undine," " The Arabian Nights/' " Scot- 
tish Chiefs," "Ivanhoe" and Thackeray's " Book 
of Snobs." " Gulliver was very real to me," she 
averred, " and I don't think I was the worse for not 
reading Shakespeare in expurgated editions. We 
expurgated as we read, child fashion, taking into 
our sleek little heads all that we could comprehend 
or apprehend and passing over what might have been 
hurtful at a later period. I suppose we failed to 
get a very close conception of Shakespeare's colossal 
genius but we did get a tremendous and lasting im- 
pression of force and power, life and truth." 

It is a thousand times more important, this — than 
pedantical knowledge of every word the seventeenth 
century authors made classical. The telling truth 
Mrs. Wiggins lightly refers to, that when very young 
children get beauty and truth from literature, and 
slip over the allusions to evil that later on they will 
be curious about — is too little understood. I read 
Don Juan when I was but ten, and dreamed over the 
unparalleled grandeur of Byron's melancholy music. 
I swallowed whole such volumes as Chateaubriand's 



230 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

Travels, passed a warm summer without fatigue 
by the help of a wonderful time-yellowed book en- 
titled " Poets and Poetry of America," containing 
" The Culprit Fay " and many odes to Napoleon, 
and devoured without hindrance or check, between 
seven and seventeen many works of our greatest 
English writers, holding doctrines and anecdotes that 
were more than doubtful material for the reveries 
of maidens, but of which I kept only the beauty and 
remained entirely innocent of the vice. 

The child does cull sensibly if he is allowed a 
free hand. He chooses the volume which strikes a 
true note; that appeals both to his imagination and 
to his sense of reality at the same time. He likes 
realism in romance. This may be why Grimm's 
Tales are usually preferred to later embroideries 
upon the plain old reel of simple folk lore. The de- 
sire to continue adventures of a favorite hero leads 
the child to love long stories, related in sections, and 
continued for many sequent days. If he could be 
made sufficiently attractive there is a possibility that 
a single hero would last a child during the term of 
his nursery existence. Such a character is the 
worthy Tuflongo, in Holme Lee's Fairy Tales, In an 



CHILDREN'S LITERARY LIFE 231 

obscure corner among some old papers I found the 
other day that ancient volume, worth from its as- 
sociations, more than its weight in gold to me. On 
the day that my eyes opened to the light of this world 
my mother, whose imaginative nature bordered upon 
superstition, recalled a certain legend to the effect 
that if a book, a ring and a piece of money were 
placed within the reach of the new-born infant its 
choice would show its future destiny. If the money 
was touched it would become rich; if the ring a 
happy marriage was presaged, while the selection of 
the book foretold a literary career. My father, in 
the gratification of this whim added romance to it by 
purchasing a new book for the occasion. It was 
Holme Lee's Eairy Tales, a thick book in a bright 
red and gold binding, fatally attractive; and the 
blind, misguided baby put its wavering little hand on 
the volume, thereby sealing its fate, as well as estab- 
lishing an inalienable right to its first lawful piece 
of property. 

The plaything of my first year, the victim of my 
early penchant for pencil marking and the treasure 
of my whole childhood, this old book has served me 
many a good turn, and perhaps — who knows ? — an 



232 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

ill turn or so in its time. I learned to read in it, and 
learned too, from it, to live for half the time in a 
beautiful ideal world where virtue and happiness 
went hand in hand and where " love was law." 

There are worse things than a vein of romance. 
It naturally thins to a mere thread as we grow old, 
but in early life it should be a full, abounding cur- 
rent, influencing to some extent all the thoughts and 
acts of youth. An old French proverb says, "A door 
must be either open or shut." And a child must be 
one of two things; credulous, confiding, hopeful, or 
else sordid and distrustful. Shall we wish our little 
ones prematurely worldly wise? 

It is a fair and happy period where the boy and 
girl meet each other's eyes frankly and squabble and 
make up in true brotherly and sisterly fashion. Out 
on some haunt in the woods wanders one of those 
girls whom Mrs. Stowe says are happy with " three 
apples and a book," and with her a frank, saucy boy, 
intent on fishing but with a weather eye to teasing. 
He too, has a book in his pocket ; a Life of Somebody, 
and he and she exchange confidences, and thrill 
mutually over the heroic deeds of Coeur de Lion and 
Lloyd Garrison. Their mingled enthusiasms kindle 



CHILDREN'S LITERARY LIFE 233 

feelings that even after dying down a little, leaves 
something which makes future trust in human good- 
ness easier and heroism possible. Who shall say 
from what secret source of memory is drawn that 
power to endure and suffer for faith and freedom 
that makes our boy and girl go gayly forth to hard 
duties when country and humanity call ? Only 
lately a thrill went through many of us when a well- 
known woman whose beauty and social power had 
made themselves felt on two continents quietly re- 
nounced every privilege of her position to become 
a nurse to lepers. But yesterday we unfurled our 
flags and scattered flowers over the biers of a score 
of young soldiers who were the pioneers in a dan- 
gerous campaign against a threatening foreign foe. 
Does this spirit spring up in a night, like a mush- 
room ? Impossible. It takes years of up-lifting fan- 
cies and thoughts to make a hero. But the most 
potent factor in a good life — after a good mother — 
is good literature. Surround the child from infancy 
with books that contain the great lessons of life ; that 
thrill with earnestness and enthusiasm; that are 
vigorous and deep and call for response from his 
mind. To the child who opens his mind to the deep 



234 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

truths of poetry, which is the forerunner of science, 
life looks simple and easy, and he learns to attach 
himself to duty before duty assumes that complicated 
and distasteful aspect it often presents later on. It 
is the child who is averse to books, who is inimical 
to study, that is the intractable child, who rebels 
against law and order because his nature is inhar- 
monious with its own laws. Books in themselves — 
mere print and paper — are only trash except as they 
are symbols of the life of thought and imagination. 
But in our day they are symbols almost inseparable 
from it. And so the child who naturally forms an 
early friendship for books shows that the trend of his 
mind is upward, along the higher paths of life. 

A child's literary life is a secret no adult can 
ever wholly penetrate. If he seldom talks of what 
he reads he thinks the more. The memories garnered 
from his reading enter into his dreams, and pursue 
him when awake. His development is helped on per- 
haps more by his voluntary reading than by any formal 
studies. But the mother may tactfully guide his taste 
often without his knowledge, by speaking in praise of 
fine books. There should be within easy reach, such 
attractive volumes as Arabella Buckley's " Fairyland 



CHILDREN'S LITERARY LIFE 235 

of Science," for children over seven; and Haw- 
thorne's Wonder Book must be in every home. But 
even without any book especially adapted to his age 
a child will find nourishment for his taste in bits 
culled from great authors. The time to cultivate 
literary taste in children is before they can read. 
Stories told by the mother or father, when the little 
ones are cuddled about their knees in the twilight are 
the treats which young things look forward to with 
the greatest pleasure. One of the prettiest sights in 
the world is a flock of bright, eager children gathered 
around some gentle, sympathetic woman who has for- 
gotten all her cares and important duties to enter 
into their enjoyment. It is surprising that mothers 
ever neglect this function of story-telling, which is 
one of the best means of impressing important les- 
sons. A " ballad-making " parent holds his child 
a willing captive and although he may sometimes 
feel, as Emerson says, that he " is the slave of his 
power," and wish he had less gift of entertaining, 
he can teach his audience moderation in its demands. 
A child will concede almost anything for the sake 
of that charming hour " in the gloaming " when he 
is taken a journey into fancy's kingdom and made 



236 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

to forget all his little troubles and disappointments. 
Story-telling is doubtless, a natural gift, but it can 
be cultivated, and the result is well worth effort. 
There are numbers of books at hand nowadays, fur- 
nishing the outline of classical tales, which the 
mother can glance over and master easily. Her per- 
sonality is an essential quantity in the fascination 
of the twilight hour tales, though, and the more she 
can infuse herself into her stories the better they will 
be liked. Even after they read a good deal for 
themselves children prefer to hear tales related by 
a living voice. They take to books for company 
when the more vivid presence of loved friends is 
lacking. But once interested in a favorite volume 
society solicits them in vain. The true book-lover 
becomes immersed — buried, and has to be dug out 
with hoes ! But one should be cautious of interrupt- 
ing a vision of the beautiful by the intrusion of 
rougher actualities; when the reader is young. 
Subtle influences of potent worth may be at work 
within them. Most of us who have lived much with 
books are influenced more than we should probably 
like to acknowledge by reminiscences of our childish 
literary life. 



CHAPTER XV 

Foreign Languages 

" Conversation has always been considered by the great 
educators the best means of instructing children; especially 
in languages. Socrates, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Fellenburg 
and many others have been earnest advocates of it. It is 
above all, in the family that this method is useful as a 
means of preparing children for classical studies, and for 
giving them fluency in living tongues." — Marcel. 

IT is of inestimable advantage to any one to grow 
up knowing two languages so well that he can 
at will pass from one to the other, without the 
necessity of conscious translation from his mother 
tongue into that which is the less native. It is almost 
like possessing a spiritual passport that might enable 
the intelligence to take a vacation whenever it de- 
sired an extension of its experiences. Apart from 
its practical value to those who are to pursue com- 
mercial careers, or to the traveler, the complete pos- 
session of one or more foreign languages is an ex- 

237 



238 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

tension of mental power that no one can afford to 
neglect. A mere " smattering " of a language is 
entirely useless as an aid to intellectual develop- 
ment, and the complete acquaintance with one im- 
plies such facility that one may express all his 
thoughts in it with as much readiness as he can in 
his mother tongue. 

How many of our young people grow up with this 
mastery of the French, German or Spanish over 
which from five to ten years are usually spent during 
their school and college years? They may, after 
great effort and much drudgery get a reading knowl- 
edge of these foreign languages ; more rarely, a writ- 
ing knowledge. But it is seldom indeed, that the 
knowledge includes the anility to converse fluently 
or to think in it. Mastery of a foreign language can- 
not be got from text-books. One must live in the at- 
mosphere, work, play and breathe in it just as he has 
done with his mother tongue, before it enters into 
his composition and becomes an integral part of his 
existence. 

The idea of using text-books to impart a knowl- 
edge of languages is a pedantical method which 
was first adopted by a set of monks; the Jansenists 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES 239 

of Port Royal ; and has come down to us. But it has 
been meeting with disfavor for a long time, and 
will, it is to be hoped, sometime be superseded by 
the original method of the living voice of the teacher. 
In the more cultured families among us there is 
often a singular neglect of languages as a part of 
education. They are regarded as the special office 
of the school, where there is 'a great show made of 
teaching them. How thoroughly this is done may be 
inferred from such circumstances as this : In Paris 
I met at a certain pension, or boarding house, about 
thirty young women from all parts of the world, but 
especially from America, who after graduating from 
our large colleges, were beginning at the beginning 
as pupils at the " Ecole Internationale " to learn 
French. Not one could speak the tongue studied 
for from five to seven years, and scarcely one could 
read the simplest book without the help of a diction- 
ary. At St. Germaine I encountered a melancholy 
Harvard student going through the same routine by 
himself, to supplement the deficiencies of his early 
training ! Everywhere throughout Europe one meets 
Americans struggling with tongues which they are 
supposed to have studied long and seriously, but with 



240 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

which they have no intimate acquaintance. After 
years of delving through grammatical rules the 
traveler is forced to turn to an interpreter to explain 
the simplest facts relating to everyday needs. Nor 
is this lamentable deficiency singular to English 
speaking people. In France English is very poorly 
taught in the schools and only those children who 
have English governesses learn anything at all of 
our tongue. And in English boarding schools a two 
years' term is considered insufficient to get even the 
slightest reading and writing knowledge of the Eng- 
lish tongue studied at home since infancy! Be- 
cause it is taught from books. A Erench girl of my 
acquaintance who has had excellent advantages, fin- 
ished by two years at a celebrated English school and 
cannot write a note of one page in English without 
making errors a six-year-old child laughs at. But 
during our own residence at Paris I had the good 
fortune, in an exchange of conversation with a Erench 
girl, to give her a start in English that enabled her 
to go on easily after we left there, although she had 
perhaps less than thirty lessons. I took with her the 
real kindergarten method, talking about objects 
around us, and passing gradually to other matters; 



FOKEIGN LANGUAGES 241 

not undertaking to confuse her understanding by 
immediate reference to " the knife of the gardener's 
son." Yet some rules of grammar did come in 
incidentally, and were remembered as being explana- 
tions of certain " drolleries " of the singular English 
language. 

The kindergarten method is the right one; even 
when the pupils have reached an advanced age. In 
learning a language we must all go back to child- 
hood. Is it not then, a singular absurdity to teach 
children by methods that are too advanced for the 
adult who is a beginner ? Language is an outcome 
of man's emotional nature and is not to be acquired 
by an effort of the intellect working by itself. Gram- 
mar, the colorless reflection of speech, may be coolly 
studied, but to know grammar is not to know how to 
talk but how not to talk. It no more imparts the 
power of expression than knowledge of the chemical 
properties of colors makes an artist. After some 
facility of expression has been gained it is desirable 
to begin the study of grammar, if French or German 
are being studied, because these languages depend 
upon grammar for correctness of construction much 
more than our own tongue does. But the grammars 



242 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

should be of the most primary character and written 
in the language that is being studied. It is a mon- 
strous error to study any foreign grammar written 
in the mother tongue. 

~No one should he appalled by this statement and 
anticipate insuperable difficulties in the way of home 
instruction of children in foreign languages. If 
French is to be taught, buy at any French book store, 
or send to Paris and get it, the " Premiere Annee 
de Grammaire" published by Librarie Armand 
Colin, and use it as an aid to the conversations about 
grammar. Conversation, and above all, conversation, 
is the essential method of instruction. Consider the 
method of Nature with her children. In the first 
place, we perceive, then we want, and express our 
wish; then, we claim what we want. First observa- 
tion, then emotion, lastly, expansion of our ideas. 
In the most primitive stage the language is wholly 
that of emotion, and is conducted by gestures. 
Therefore, in teaching children, make use of gestures 
to help out. Little songs, accompanied by gestures, 
little games that are actively spoken, ^.x words in the 
minds of the players. Out of feeling springs ex- 
pression as flowers grow from the vital substance in 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES 243 

the plant. The more intense our feeling the more 
vivid and picturesque our expression. In building 
up a method for the learning of a foreign language 
we must analyze the way we learned our mother 
tongue and proceed along similar lines. That was 
the vehicle of our earliest wants and thoughts; simi- 
larly, the newer tongue must first endeavor to depict 
our simpler wishes and ideas, gradually progressing 
to those that are more complicated. 

One of the most absurd things ever attempted was 
setting children to learn languages from books. 
Even the conning of words was stupid enough, but 
when it came to memorizing rules of syntax, the di- 
vergence from common sense was at its highest point 
of departure. Yet what countless thousands are still 
pursuing this road to nowhere! And how disre- 
garded are the warnings of those who like Monsieur 
Gouin, relate their sorry experiences of the classical 
methods of learning a language and advise the aban- 
donment of books and the use of a system that is in 
accord with Nature. Against a deeply rooted preju- 
dice our mighty philosopher, Herbert Spencer, made 
but little headway, when he showed the world its 
error, half a century ago. But the labors of Jacotot, 



244 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

Gouin and Marcel have prepared the way for the 
adoption of a rational method; and although it is 
little known or practised now, there is hope that in 
time it will entirely drive out the classical or monk- 
ish method. 

Monsieur Marcel, whose clear and concise little 
manual on " The Study of Languages " well trans- 
lated lately, should be read by every mother, divides 
his method into two parts ; the practical, which asso- 
ciates ideas and their signs directly, as when a child 
plays in German and French with native nurses and 
so acquires both languages at the same time that he 
learns to speak his mother tongue from his parents; 
and the comparative, where a foreign language is 
learned by translating the signs of our native tongue 
into the strange one. The first plan he thinks the 
only proper one for young persons under twelve; 
while the second, calling for judgment and reflec- 
tion, is an aid to the mental development of riper 
years. The practical method is however, in my 
opinion, not only superior to translation, but is the 
only way that a foreign language can be learned so 
as to afford a ready means of communication with 



FOEEIGN LANGUAGES 245 

others, or the power of expressing one's own thoughts 
through written words. 

When an adult and a child visit a foreign country 
the little one learns to speak the new language far 
more rapidly than his older fellow student because 
he gets his knowledge at first hand; not by saying 
to himself for instance, that a certain word in Ger- 
man stands for a certain word in English, but that 
das Kind is himself, der Hut the thing upon his head, 
and so on. His mother meanwhile, labors by the 
comparative method to think from one set of symbols 
into another set, instead of immediately associating 
objects and their symbols. 

The child's way is the living way, the other a 
colorless imitation. Translating has so long been the 
regular routine, that many persons are shocked by 
the suggestion of discarding it in favor of the ap- 
parently puerile method of Nature. How pernicious 
the translation method ordinarily is has been proved 
to me by many instances of children losing all in- 
terest in foreign languages after some drudgery at 
this dull work. One child who had lived abroad 
long enough to become proficient in French — speak- 



246 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

ing, reading and writing it quite well at twelve years, 
not only lost all her fluency after four years at an 
American high school, where she was put in the ad- 
vanced class and set to translating, but acquired such 
a distaste for the language she constantly heard 
mutilated that she can now scarcely be persuaded to 
read a line or speak a word of the tongue that was 
once as familiar to her as her mother tongue. 

A reading acquaintance with a language can be 
gained by translating, or the comparative system. 
But even here its inferiority is evident. How slow 
and tedious is our progress when every sentence in a 
book must be re-thought in our own tongue. And 
what proportion of men and women who have studied 
languages by the classical method in their youth are 
able after leaving school, to read the literature of 
those languages fluently enough to enjoy it ? 

As a means of mental discipline translating has its 
advantages. Classical teachers deny that the natural 
sciences have an equal claim. But no humanist how- 
ever enthusiastic over study for its own sake, will 
refuse to admit that the professed object of studying 
a foreign language is to learn it; and if it can be 
learned better by one system than another, the prac- 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES 247 

tical plan should be chosen. Now, the only practical 
plan is to live the language we wish to learn. To 
act through it, think in it, understand by it and speak 
it until it has become dissolved in our blood and is as 
much part of us as our mother tongue. One lan- 
guage learned thus is worth for mental discipline 
twenty gotten superficially. Under exceptionally 
favorable circumstances, as when several languages 
are spoken in a family which is composed of two or 
three nationalities, it is possible to learn all of them 
very well. But only persons with a special gift for 
languages ever get a thorough knowledge of more 
than two. And for all practical purposes, as well 
as for mental discipline, two are enough. 

An allusion must here be made to the exceeding 
carelessness and short-sightedness of parents about one 
matter. I know many Germans living in New York 
who send their children to American schools, anxious 
that they should learn their adopted tongue, but ab- 
solutely neglectful of the privilege that is easily 
within their reach of mastering two languages con- 
secutively, through home conversation in German. 
Some parents who speak German between themselves 
always speak broken English when talking with their 



248 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

children! It is incredible that when it is so diffi- 
cult to learn a language through the medium of school 
instruction that so ready a means of acquiring mas- 
tery of both the inherited tongue and the adopted 
one should be neglected. 

I know one little girl of ten whose acquaintance 
with three languages was a marvelous thing to her 
teachers and playmates. Of Dutch origin, she had 
learned that tongue in infancy from her parents; 
then, her grandmother being German, she had ac- 
quired a good knowledge of that language through 
constant association with her. But she had also, 
lived some years in France and had gone to school 
there, so she could speak and read French with fa- 
cility. Entering an American school at the age of 
ten, and keeping up, in obedience to her wise parents, 
her acquaintance with the tongues learned in her early 
childhood, she was able to add English to her former 
languages without any trouble at all, and in a couple 
of years spoke it without any objectionable accent. 
This shows what may be done by using the proper 
means with young children, of mixed races. It is 
much easier for the child of parents who have come 
to America from foreign lands to recollect their na- 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES 249 

tive tongue and acquire English than to learn their 
mother speech afterwards, as a foreign language. 
This truism should not need to be said, but it is 
so ignored that it is necessary to impress upon par- 
ents their absurdity in sending their children to 
school here to learu from books their native — or that 
which is native to their parents — speech. I have 
known this to be done in many instances. Some 
young women whose father was a learned German 
physician, and never, during his thirty years in this 
country, forgot his native accent, absolutely sent his 
three daughters to a German tutor when they were 
grown, to learn in a class composed of Americans, 
the tongue that should have been theirs by heritage. 

If a child acquires German or French before he is 
twelve he may then give a couple of years to the study 
of Latin in the preparatory school, and if he has 
the good fortune to learn it as he should, as a living 
language, he will know it pretty well by that time. 
According to the old-fashioned method it will take 
him seven years to get even the slightest reading 
knowledge of it. The term " dead language " is a 
strange misnomer. If it is dead it is no longer a 
language, any more than a corpse is a person. Were 



250 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

I to undertake to teach Greek, of which I know 
nothing, I should take my young pupil to Athens and 
accompany him in his sports with his young com- 
rades, so that what we both learned together we might 
practise with ease and naturalness. There are a few 
schools where Latin and Greek are taught as living 
tongues, and under gifted, enthusiastic teachers the 
pupils make almost incredible progress. The Ger- 
man professors have the advantage over us in a corps 
of thoroughly trained special teachers, but before long 
we shall probably equal them in this respect. 

It is an open question whether study of the classics 
for the general student is worth while. Spencer and 
Bain say not. But Monsieur Eouillet utters these 
trenchant words : " If boys, on leaving the lyceum, 
forgot all their Greek and Latin immediately, the 
cerebral development and the tendencies acquired 
would be enough to prove the utility of classical 
studies." But in any event, the classics should not 
be entered upon before the thirteenth year, and may 
be learned in school; unless one of the parents 
chooses to take the trouble to dig up his neglected 
lore and be the assistant of his young son or daugh- 
ter. My own mother who had been an excellent 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES 251 

Greek scholar in her youth, could not recall more 
than enough to start me on the alphabet when it came 
my turn to learn! And I know one very studious 
girl who lived the life of an anchorite for five years 
to keep at the head of her class in Greek, but who, 
after passing her examination, straightway proceeded 
to bury all her knowledge of Greek fathoms deep un- 
der more useful things, so that within a year she 
could scarcely construe one page of the " dead 
tongue." I cannot think as Fouillet does, that so 
much effort and so little result is worth while. For 
mental discipline I believe that the thorough knowl- 
edge of a living language, like German, French or 
Italian, is more than equivalent to years of drudgery 
in Greek which is to be forgotten at once after pass- 
ing an examination. 

The case is different with Latin, of which every 
educated person must possess some knowledge. Un- 
fortunately very few parents recollect enough of their 
badly learned classical language to impart it to their 
children. We must as a rule, depend upon the 
schools. But modern languages are essentially the 
business of home teachers, for they are to be learned 
by the comparative method, that is, by object teach- 



252 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

ing instead of text-books. Erom four to say, ten 
years, the child is at its best period for learning 
languages by the natural method. If the mother 
is not proficient in French or German she will do well 
to call in native tutors, insisting upon object teaching, 
and attending the lessons in order to see that her 
ideas are carried out. At certain hours every day 
— for it is highly important that no lapses occur, the 
mind easily taking on the habit of looking for cer- 
tain activities at regular hours daily, and lending it- 
self to them with pleasure — there may be " Erench 
plays " or " German plays " which consist in banish- 
ing English for the time and carrying on the games 
entirely in the foreign tongue. The child learns 
phrases by the help of gestures and accents ; the new 
language appeals to him in the same way that his 
native one does, through his emotions, and the great 
object is gained that his ear gets trained and he under- 
stands it when spoken. We say that we wish our 
child to learn to speak Erench, but that amounts to 
nothing unless he can understand it when others 
speak it. We must recollect that the most important 
point is to train the ear and not the eye ; for it is the 
ear which is the organ of understanding language. 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES 253 

And one of the prime difficulties of an adult who tries 
to read French or German after a course of classical 
instruction in them is that he sees word but does not 
feel them as he would if he had learned his language 
orally. They should be vibrant and full of melody, 
just as English is to him. There must be no sense 
of a medium between the author and himself; they 
should be en rapport. Facility in reading can 
scarcely be gained until at least twenty volumes have 
been carefully read. 

I had a happy experience once in giving children 
active lessons in French. It was down in Virginia, 
in that region Amelie Rives has made classic, the old 
county of Albemarle, where when it rains, the en- 
tire soil becomes a river of red mud, and people must 
find occupation within door for consecutive after- 
noons during rainy spells. There were six children 
in the house, and it rained hard. I coaxed an oblig- 
ing young woman to play light airs on the piano, and 
getting all the youngsters together, taught them some 
calisthenics in " Grace," with the explanations given 
entirely in French. The motions were gone over 
several times, always accompanied by the same words, 
until even the dullest had them impressed on his 



254 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

brain. Then we played games in the big hall, and 
spoke our directions for " cache-cache " — I spy — 
and other simple little games entirely in French. It 
was all a lively play, with no mention of intended 
instruction, but the children learned all the num- 
bers, up to twenty, in a couple of afternoons, be- 
sides many words and several phrases. Was not 
that quick work ? 

As soon as the child becomes somewhat familiar 
with the language we are teaching him through play, 
we should begin to read simple tales to him; prose 
rather than poetry. The same tale may be read over 
and over again, for children are, happily, pleased 
with repetition. When they know the little story we 
may have them tell it to us in their own words. We 
may adroitly direct their attention to the verb rather 
than to the substantive, getting them to describe ac- 
tion rather than things. Eor the verb is the objec- 
tive point of that language and to know a single one 
so thoroughly as to be able to apply it in every ad- 
missible way is better than to commit to memory 
any number of nouns. 

Ebr children who had gained a fair acquaintance 
with the tongue in question I devised something that 



FOEEIGN LANGUAGES 255 

had excellent results. There were but two of us to- 
gether at one time, as the idea was scarcely applicable 
to more. We took turns in reading from a well 
written French book of fiction, in which there was a 
good deal of conversation, and each was provided with 
note-book and pencil. As one read, at first slowly, 
the other jotted down rapidly, all the words she could 
catch, the reader never pausing to repeat or give any 
light on obscure points. The reporter had to do just 
the best she could to get her phrases as they fell from 
the reader's lips. Then she in turn, took the book 
and became the reader, reading the same page that 
had been read to her while the other wrote down rap- 
idly all she heard. Then, the same page was read by 
each in turn, but more rapidly. The third time it was 
read it was read as fast as a person ordinarily speaks 
and the reporter had to stir herself to get down the 
phrases, as she had not the privilege of referring to 
what she had previously written but was obliged to 
depend entirely upon her memory and ear. 

The competition was lively, and each became 
very ambitious to excel in this reporting busi- 
ness. As the book was interesting, we did not weary 
of it until it had been pretty well exhausted as a 



256 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

medium of study, and as we were obliged to con- 
tinually think in the tongue we were using, English 
being thrown almost aside even in our minds during 
this lively work, wonderful facility resulted in the 
use of French in the course of one winter. But the 
difficulty with a language as with music and paint- 
ing, is that it cannot be neglected with impunity. 
Practice must be assiduous and faithful, for the lapse 
of a few months makes a sensible falling off in fluency 
and knowledge. 

However, there is one comfort; knowledge once 
acquired can be renewed at but little expense of brain 
power. Persons have been known to recall a language 
once known but long since forgotten, after many 
years of disuse, when mingling with people of the 
race among whom the tongue is spoken. And there 
are singular instances of a long-forgotten language 
coming back to a dying person; showing that what 
the brain has once carefully registered stays there ; al- 
though a life of occupations leading apart from the 
accomplishment appears to have completely driven 
it away. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Accomplishments 

"But if all the useless ornaments of our life are to be 
cut off in the process of adaptation, evolution would empov- 
erish instead of enriching our nature." — George San- 

TAYANA. 

IN the days when there was a wide swath be- 
tween education for girls and for boys, it was the 
custom for parents to be ambitious of making 
their daughters " accomplished " women. A little 
music, a little painting, a little knowledge of embroid- 
ering and burnt wood work entered into the equip- 
ment of all gently-bred girls. But colleges opened 
their doors to women; Vassar was built; new ideals 
sprang to life in the breasts of mothers ; their daugh- 
ters were to be trained for life, not merely varnished 
and finished. And all the softer pleasures of the 
intelligence were kicked out of sight by the hoof of 
sport. 

For it is necessary for minds that work hard to 
257 



258 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

relax in some way. Recreation is a recognized fac- 
tor in health. After many hours spent indoors it 
seemed the only ' rational course for girls to go to 
the golf-fields, to the tennis courts, to the archery 
fields and basket-ball grounds and spend all the time 
they could spare in active exercise in the open. 
This sane practice has given us a new race of women ; 
hardy, fearless, practical and — wholly opposed to 
sentiment in every form. No one is more apprecia- 
tive of the splendid physical endowments of modern 
American women than I. Reared in boy-fashion my- 
self, while very young, that period of " running 
wild " probably tided over much subsequent im- 
prudent bookishness later on; and I wish that the 
out-door life had lasted for a much longer time. Yet, 
may there not be an excess of physical recreation in 
a girl's training? If, for the sake of our general 
evolution, we are forced to " cut off all useless orna- 
ments " as S ant ay ana says, will we not lose something 
precious out of life? 

Sport is a delightful and exhilarating pastime ; yet 
the mind does not particularly benefit by it. Mental 
recreation is necessary for the complete development 
of our nature, and nothing affords a better variation 



ACCOMPLISHMENTS 259 

of intellectual occupations than what are called ac- 
complishments. It is said that a man is better for 
a hobby of some sort ; likewise, a woman is much the 
better for an accomplishment. A cultivated taste for 
a fine art is a resource against dulness and unrest; 
it keeps the heart sound and satisfied, the mind sane 
and well poised. Parents should not then, cut off 
accomplishments from their schedule of education, 
but ought to give a child every opportunity to prac- 
tise such a safe and agreeable mental game as an out- 
let to emotional energy. Making education wholly 
" practical " and conducive to the work of life stifles 
instincts that break out later on in various sorts of 
wild excesses. As mechanical musical instruments 
replace the harp, piano and violin; and moving pic- 
ture shows replace home entertainments that require 
mental effort, so in proportion will " feminism " drive 
out those old-fashioned womanly graces that once 
made home a place to be remembered with tenderness, 
and family relations something indescribably sacred. 
A number of years ago there appeared in a popular 
magazine one of those cartoons which by a few bold 
strokes depict the folly of an epoch. It represented 
a poor woman on her knees scrubbing the kitchen 



260 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

floor while in the parlor her pretty daughter prac- 
tised her voice to the accompaniment of the piano. 
In the mother's uplifted eyes, gleaming out of a 
wrinkled, care-worn face, was an expression of pride 
and satisfaction; by self-immolation she had made 
her daughter a lady. Was it such absurd travesties 
upon proprieties as this that brought upon music as 
an accomplishment the reproach that it is a mere 
pandering to the vanity and idleness of young women 
who do not choose to be useful \ There is a terrible 
excess in natural readjustments of social follies, and 
education suffers for every craze that takes possession 
of the public. What is right and proper in itself 
falls into disfavor through the stupidity cf those who 
do not know how to be moderate in anything. 

Now, wherever the parents' position justify such 
a course — but not otherwise — children should be 
taught music, dancing, painting and kindred ac- 
complishments as an essential part of their home 
training. Education has doubtless been improved 
to some extent by making it conduce to knowledge 
bearing upon the kind of careers that are in view for 
young persons, but too much zeal here inevitably leads 
to an oversight in another place; the proper outlet 



ACCOMPLISHMENTS 261 

for emotion. Concentration only upon the objective 
side of living will develop in our young people a kind 
of ruggedness similar to that of plants whose blossoms 
are continually cut off by the gardener so that their 
whole vitality may be given to growth. They present 
a fine appearance of health and strength but no sug- 
gestion of that grace and beauty that accompany a 
fulfilment of the function that is at once tender and 
potent, delicate yet eternal; the stretching out of 
fibers toward that spiritual realm where sentiment 
and feeling make the joy of life. 

If adjustment to the ends we are trying to realize 
in this scientific age compels the surrender of every- 
thing not distinctly useful, we shall become erelong 
a poverty-stricken nation despite our vast material 
wealth. The fine arts cannot flourish in an atmosphere 
of bustle; the finer feelings develop best where there 
is leisure to throw out those little mental tendrils 
which cling about old associations and traditions. 
Much to be pitied is the man or woman who because 
of too great devotion to the practical has lost the 
faculty of meditation on the beautiful. Who can de- 
fine the limits to the happiness occasioned by the 
merely picturesque? 



262 THE MOTHER IJSF EDUCATION 

Too much earnestness drives one mad. Let lis 
then, admit recreation into our lives as a recognized 
necessity; not merely physical recreation, which re- 
pays us for our time in relays of health, quite as 
tangible as any other purchasable article, but mental 
recreation, which is the satisfaction of impulses 
reaching out toward the beautiful in nature and art. 
We need frequent transitions from big tasks to little 
ones, from those that exercise reason to those which 
make distinct call upon the imagination. We gain 
in cultivating as accomplishments those things we 
may never be able to do very well, but like to 
do. The ambition to excel does not then draw heavily 
upon our resources, limiting the free sweep of our 
enjoyment. The sense of not being too serious is 
an agreeable variety. 

There is a tendency at present to pretend that 
everything must have an excuse for being; that it 
must make money or bring health. We dance be- 
cause it is a fine exercise ; motor because being in the 
air is excellent for the nerves; sing to expand the 
lungs ; go to moving picture shows to get information 
about countries we have not visited. It is not frank ; 
this disguise of preference. We do all these things 



ACCOMPLISHMENTS 263 

because we crave amusement; because they seem to 
us agreeable things to do. If passing a little time 
at home in the occupations which are now out of 
favor could be made popular we should once more 
see young persons going about with sketch books 
under their arms in summer, and hear a little music 
and conversation at home in the evenings; perhaps 
even have some moderate dancing in our own little 
drawing rooms instead of a mad stampede to cabarets ; 
with consequences that threaten the foundations of 
society. 

Let us nourish our children's souls. By the ex- 
penditure of a little time and money we can develop 
their natural tendencies along the line of musical and 
artistic expressions so that their minds may expand 
harmoniously, not grow up dwarfed and imperfect. 
If our girl has no decided talent for music we should 
not enforce the harsh decree that excludes music en- 
tirely from her education, should she like to learn 
something of the piano or violin. Only positive 
aversion ought to excuse her from some application 
to an art that will be a resource to her; if not an 
occupation bringing in return in money or fame. 
Every creature has need of the privilege of making 



264 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

a little melody. A small voice may give happiness 
to its possessor; a little flexibility of finger comfort 
her when loneliness or misfortune overtake her. The 
person who adds to his vocation in life an avocation, 
becomes independent of the world. 

In a good scheme of education there is a full and 
complete preparation for life's serious labor kept 
constantly in view, and also, indulgence of the tastes 
and inclinations that brighten life. Accomplish- 
ments have the same relation to the mind that pets 
do to the affections. They keep up kindly currents 
of feeling that conduce to the welfare of the whole 
nature, and without which we are hirelings to life's 
business; joylessly fulfilling a prescribed task. 

In the arts as in science, the beginning is every- 
thing. A bad beginning may do more damage than 
can be later on repaired by a fine master. If it can 
possibly be done, have the child who is to learn to 
play the piano, be under the instruction of a real 
artist in music for the first year ; preferably a woman. 
The primary object is not technique; that will come 
later on, if there is enough taste in the pupil to justify 
a long and severe training; the primary object is 
development of a love for melody, as opposed to 



ACCOMPLISHMENTS 265 

noise. The natural instinct of the child will lead him 
to play " tunes." Let him. But teach him to make 
the tunes true to their measure of time and pitch. 
Make him familiar from the beginning, with the 
principle that music is a measuring of sounds, so 
that certain spaces intervene between them; that 
unless the right spaces interpose the result is un- 
bearable noise. Is this often explained to the child 
who is required to " keep time " as a task ? It was 
not explained to me by the stiff English governess 
who kept my young body in prison on a hard stool 
while she droned out her everlasting and meaningless 
— " one, two, three, four," until I nearly lost all my 
natural love for music under the infliction of " keep- 
ing time." 

But the child who is made to understand that time- 
keeping means measuring distance between sounds 
will become interested in following out a principle 
that brings results. Give it an example between 
something drummed out regardless of harmony and 
the same thing measured; there can scarcely fail to 
be an appreciation of the difference. If there is we 
must infer a lamentable absence of correctness of ear. 
A poor ear can be cultivated, however, where there 



266 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

is present a real taste for music. When that too, is 
absent, one must decide whether any amount of musi- 
cal education is worth while, or whether efforts should 
not be directed toward some other form of art. 

While there ought to be opportunity given for some 
knowledge of all the arts, time and energy should be 
chiefly spent on that especial one for which an early 
liking is shown. No child should be made an intel- 
lectual prisoner. Seven years is about the right age 
to begin piano lessons and an hour each day is as much 
as ought to be required for practise. If the mother 
is herself a good musician there is no better or more 
patient instructor; yet, the more of an artist she is 
the less likely is she to give the lessons willingly. 
Perhaps she may be able to effect the exchange of les- 
sons with another mother, helping an advanced pupil 
in return for primary instruction for her own daugh- 
ter, for it is notable that those who are gifted in music 
detest the drudgery of teaching the young. Happily, 
there are born teachers, in music as in other branches, 
so that one can scarcely fail to find the right teacher. 
It is really important that the beginner should be 
well taught. I have seen too many instances of 
wasted time and money on poor teachers not to advo- 



ACCOMPLISHMENTS 267 

cate this most earnestly. Of all things expression 
should be sought in the beginning. When there is no 
technique to make sounds melodic, the dependence 
must be placed upon feeling. Even a simple exercise 
can be played by a young child so as to be agreeable 
to people, if she has learned to put into it the expres- 
sion native to its spirit. Consequently, we may dis- 
courage pounding on keys and unsympathetic render- 
ing of airs, even when the child is at a very tender 
age. The object is music; not noise. 

Dancing is now " a craze." It is scarcely neces- 
sary to suggest that it be taught to children. Eut 
there are right and wrong ways. One of the sanest 
is the method that prevails in the smaller towns of 
France, where little classes are organized for after- 
noon dancing two afternoons a week, and the mothers 
or chaperons sit along the wall watching, while a 
couple of teachers put the little girls and boys through 
their steps to the music of a piano exceedingly well 
played by the third assistant. It is simply an in- 
formal little ball, amusing and innocent, affording op- 
portunities for companionship of a peaceable and 
well-bred character, with a good deal of sensible in- 
struction thrown in. The French dances, — the 



268 THE MOTHEE IE" EDUCATION 

" Berlin/' the " minuet " and the world-known " lanc- 
ers " are very pretty ; but the adaptation of our " Bos- 
ton " is less happy, being a sort of wild jump, after a 
fashion that is called the " American method." We 
do not like to own it. 

Dancing may be taught in small classes, better than 
in large ones, and every neighborhood should have its 
organized class for children, at prices low enough to 
allow every one to become a member. Unfortunately, 
prices for good instruction are often prohibitive. In 
that case, the mother who knows how to dance pretty 
well, should invite some other little ones to share 
the privilege of her own child, and give them all 
home lessons at least twice a week. Make it a little aft- 
ernoon function, with light refreshments afterwards. 
No child under the age of twelve years should be 
allowed to go to a dance held after night-fall. I state 
this with more rigor than I usually state any sugges- 
tion, for most parents are now relaxing the old sane 
rule for young people of " early to bed and early to 
rise/' and letting them stay up until all sorts of 
hours. It is why so many of our young girls look 
faded at sixteen and our boys take to cigarettes to 
" calm their nerves." If only we could get ourselves 



ACCOMPLISHMENTS 269 

to emulate the fashion of our sensible German friends 
who make the afternoons the time for recreation, and 
sit out in gardens during the early evenings, sending 
their children to bed when the lights are lit. Not the 
American Germans, however, who have learned our 
ways. 

In a recent book * I have described children's enter- 
tainments, especially lawn parties, which are among 
the pleasantest of summer recreations for young peo- 
ple, and ought to be more popular among us. They 
are exceedingly popular in France. 

i Novel Ways of Entertaining, by Florence Hull Winterburn. 
Harper & Brothers, New York. Price $1.00 net. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Infant Politicians) 

" Complete living is the aim of all education." — Trum- 
bull. 

THERE is always a great run on packing boxes 
at the time of an election. The boys want 
them for bonfires. All the months during 
which the heads of families are soberly laying in ad- 
ditions to their stock of fixed opinions and theories by 
the aid of their favorite newspapers our boys are mak- 
ing secret preparations for a timely outburst of en- 
thusiasm. The zeal they display in collecting barrels 
and other lumber, the parsimony with which they^ 
hoard and the ingenuity with which they secrete their 
ill-gotten plunder are simply astounding to older 
heads. 

I watched from my window lately the making of a 
prodigious bonfire to celebrate the last presidential 
election. A swarm of boys, ranging from four to 

eighteen, buzzed back and forth from the middle of 

270 



INFANT POLITICIANS 271 

the street to the rear cellar of a corner grocery kept 
by the father of one of the young* patriots. Each 
time a pair of panting fellows emerged bearing aloft 
a huge hogshead or pile of boxes they were greeted 
with a triumphant shout, and twenty hands assisted 
in hurling their burden into the center of a pyre which 
was already sending what seemed a dangerous column 
of smoke toward the heavens. The supply of fuel 
was apparently inexhaustible and the fun grew mad- 
der each instant. Joining hands the youthful fire- 
fiends were dancing around and almost into the fire 
when a giant policeman hove in sight with all canvas 
spread and a howl of indignation. Presto ! The en- 
tire street was alive with little flying figures, and 
the cry of " Ginger ! " echoed from one end of the 
block to the other, as the youngsters scurried about, 
watching the officer's attempts to put out the con- 
flagration, throwing an occasional box under his very 
nose, and uttering groans or shouts as the policeman 
or the flame appeared to be momentarily in the as- 
cendant. The end did not come for a long hour and 
when the representative of law and order finally 
stamped on a handful of embers and turned away — 
the fire was re-kindled within ten minutes. 



272 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

"Boys will be boys!" ejaculated indulgent on- 
lookers ; and there is no possible way to keep young- 
sters from celebrating great occasions in tbeir own 
particular fasbion. They will steal grocers' barrels 
and boxes and they will defy parental and official au- 
thority when their time comes, and devote the whole 
of their little souls to " painting the town red." 

The truth is some laws are meant to be broken, 
for Solon, who knew how to make the laws which 
" were not the best he could devise but the best that 
Athens could bear" was dust and ashes at that 
prejudiced epoch when America borrowed from her 
Saxon forebears some good and other absurd regula- 
tions for the everlasting discomfort of her states. 
The lawyer clan study that they may help us escape 
penalties of a code too strict in many things. Not 
long since I heard the son of a great corporation 
lawyer explain that his father wished him to study 
law so that he might help the firm when his time 
came — to " get along easy." This is more serious, 
but the children are not far wrong in believing that 
at times of great national excitement a little rioting 
will not be charged against them very heavily by the 
elders who themselves go about on election nights 



INFANT POLITICIANS 273 

tooting horns and springing watchmen's rattles. 
Next day these playthings are contemptuously thrown 
aside and the fathers go to their business with cus- 
tomary sobriety. A president is elected; one party 
is satisfied, the other accepts defeat philosophically; 
the country settles down, and the children go back 
to their lessons. But nobody questions them as to 
the meaning of last night's frolic; nobody uses it to 
impress on them their own future responsibility in 
government. 

It is incomprehensible how parents can let slip such 
favorable opportunities to instruct their children in 
fundamental matters, ordinarily tame and dull to 
their young spirits, but at such instants thrilling with 
interest. The time to impress any lesson in morals 
is at the moment that the child is awake to the idea of 
morality and its significance; not at those other 
periods when he is indifferent to any aspect of the 
question. With great adroitness and tact should 
general ideas be suggested, and then left to ripen 
in the hearers' minds. Most of the very slight po- 
litical education children receive at home consists 
in disconnected prejudices about individuals. They 
believe that certain men are " bad for the country " 



274 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

and others " good." Why or wherefore they could not 
possibly explain excepting that " father says so." 
They are seldom given precepts of conduct, founded 
upon sociological laws, and aided to solve problems for 
themselves. In this respect how inferior is our 
method of training from that of the ancient Persians ! 
Xenophon's history of the education of the boy Cy- 
rus, is full of illuminating suggestions. One of the 
lessons early impressed on this future ruler over a 
great nation was that he should so manage his govern- 
ment that " the citizens should not be capable of any 
act that was base or vile." Nor should be punished 
for vile acts, but should not be capable of them. Oh, 
what an ideal realm, where government was merely 
preventive of wickedness and rule was benignant and 
paternal! Cyrus became so enlightened that one of 
the most profound thoughts on justice that ever was 
expressed by mortal emanates from him : — " No one 
has any business with government who is not better 
than the governed." In all these centuries have we 
advanced beyond the careful training of the Persian 
youths, who were taught to do well two things ; — 
draw the bow and speak the truth? Courage and 
honesty; absolute courage, uncompromising honesty. 



INFANT POLITICIANS 275 

Are they not all of political virtue ? No, — we should 
add one more — modern society has developed this 
virtue through the evolution of generosity. We now 
believe in succoring the weak. 1 

History may be made to bear upon moral training. 
Children get deductions from concrete examples much 
quicker than from bare facts. Even in the epoch of 
their folk-lore tales the prudent mother will find sug- 
gestions from fairyland to point her great morals. 
The fairies are kind, generous, helpful; they submit 
to proper laws and revolt only against tyranny. 
Primitive people are simple in their ideas, needing but 
little supervision, but they too, must obey certain 
regulations that safeguard the general community. 
Prom history of the ancients, with their out-breaks of 
oppression, grounded on narrowness and religious 
bigotry, to the narrations of our own times, rich les- 
sons may be borrowed and endless interest stimulated 
in noble deeds. But the mother should recollect that 
the best lesson she can give her child of justice and 
equity is the practice of those virtues toward him- 

i As this book goes to press the most dreadful war the world 
has known annihilates the optimistic hopes of the Hague 
Peace Treaties. Alas, " Man's inhumanity to man must make 
the angels weep." 



276 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION" 

self. The mother whose ideas of political govern- 
ment are perverted by the frenzied pursuit of one 
particular end — which may be premature, unwise, 
unimportant — whose mind is warped and distorted 
in all its process by fanatical adherence to a single 
idea, so that more general ideas, greater principles, 
are subordinated to the insignificant item, — is un- 
worthy to direct the moral education of her sons and 
daughters. There are misguided mothers who are 
at this instant making scape-goats of their children, 
catch-traps to inveigle into their maws the one morsel 
on which they have set their appetites, and who have 
concentrated all their efforts on inspiring in baby 
breasts a hatred of laws that seem partial to men over 
women. Have they any conception of the rancor, the 
bigotry, the unwholesome feelings they are exciting in 
hearts so young that they should be shielded from 
every suggestion of partisanship on any question? 
May wisdom come to these mothers before it is too 
late. 

We are still under the old prejudice that young 
minds cannot grasp a general principle, and that 
philosophical reflections are unwelcome to them. But 
in reality even very young children are by nature 



INFANT POLITICIANS 277 

philosophical and they delight in a broad, general 
view. Indeed, to generalize is their especial tend- 
ency. It is very easy to give them right ideas about 
government, if a little pains are taken at the right 
time ; that is, when they are interested in the matter. 
A very small minority of thinking teachers have re- 
cently grown to a recognition of the need of some in- 
struction for young people in the science and art of 
politics. Some books have been written for their en- 
lightenment ; notably NordhofFs " Politics for Young 
Americans." But I should not advise parents to de- 
pend upon it as a means of complete instruction. 
Politics in the abstract make but dry reading, and 
very few children have such a thirst for knowledge 
about government that they will delve into a mass 
of mere words for elusive ideas. A parent who has 
himself a clear understanding of the principles of 
government and is moderately free from prejudices, 
can readily give all necessary instruction to his chil- 
dren. Bright young people catch up suggestions 
here and there which stimulate their desire for sound 
information. Over-hearing arguments and disputes 
they beseech you for " the truth." Too often they 
are given scraps and rags in place of clean, whole 



278 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

fabric. It is not very easy for a person who is in 
the habit of thinking rather loosely himself to classify 
his ideas and reduce them to a clear, strong formula. 
This is going at once to the bottom of things, and 
not every one can do it. But nothing less satisfies 
children, and nothing less should satisfy us. 

We find out for the first time how shallow is our 
knowledge of some fundamental matters when our 
small one puts the question, — 

" Mother, what is government % " 

Through our startled mind creeps an old formula, 
" by the people, for the people," and we reply with 
decision, " The people, my dear." The child hesi- 
tates. He will not ask what " people " means, for 
any baby knows that ; but he goes forth with a sense 
of mystification. Thrown upon his own resources he 
thinks of the personality most commonly associated 
with public events and concludes that as a matter of 
fact, government means police. Many, many little 
ones have a general impression to this effect, and 
their love of the laws of their country is in ratio 
to their love of those functionaries whose aim in life 
seems to be to restrict the natural liberties and enjoy 
ments of the young. When these young people attain 



INFANT POLITICIANS 279 

their majority it is not probable that it will seem to 
them a matter of vital importance how they vote. 
They will no doubt cast their vote where it will be of 
most benefit to themselves. 

It is dangerous to let our children form their ideas 
of politics on the basis of street experiences. The 
public schools earnestly undertake to inculcate sound 
ideas regarding politics, and do so to a very large 
extent. Yet before I would entrust this part of my 
child's training to any school I should want to be 
very sure of the character of the teacher. It is highly 
improbable that he will present cool, calm truths, un- 
colored by his own preferences. He cannot. His 
tones and emphasis betray him. If he is popular 
with his pupils they will judge as he judges ; if they 
dislike him they will go contrary to everything he 
advocates even though his utterances are as worthy as 
those of Khadamanthus. 

Who is to be trusted to teach impartial ideas of 
politics or of religion ? " We" said my Sunday 
school teacher, the niece of the bishop, " are the 
church. All others are denominations ! " And it 
was only through the providential intervention of a 
tattered edition of a patriotic history of the United 



280 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

States, describing in graphic manner the sufferings 
of our soldiers during certain campaigns of the Revo- 
lution that I was enabled to offset the bigoted rela- 
tion of colonial history by my opinionated English 
governess, whose thin cheeks used to burn as she 
almost called George Washington a traitor ! 

There is too much emotion and too little reason 
in the way we deal with politics. We talk too much 
of parties and persons and too little of principles. 
Our children know little beyond the fact that they 
are huzzahing for some one leader in opposition to 
another. Americans are very good-humored and 
bear no malice. The day after a presidential elec- 
tion I heard a street lounger hail a passing acquaint- 
ance in this fashion, " Hullo, Jim, how's T. R. 
now % " And the friend rejoined with the most ami- 
able of accents, " He's all right, my boy ! " 

This is pleasant, but " life is real, life is ear- 
nest," and a deep responsibility rests upon us to give 
our children a keener insight into the great principle 
upon which government rests than they can gain by 
listening to flippant repartee and idle campaign talk. 

I think we scarcely take enough account of the 
vagueness and misapprehension of the child mind 



INFANT POLITICIANS 281 

toward some abstract matters that we might make 
plain to them by taking a little pains. When I was 
very small I used often to accompany my father 
to the public buildings in Washington city. Looking 
with awe and love at the marble dome of the Capitol 
I would ask to whom it belonged. 

" To everybody." 

" To me ? " 

" Yes." 

" Then/' I would rejoin, after a period of silent 
pondering, " why can't I have my own part to take 
away ? " 

The answer to this was only a vague smile, for he 
apparently did not find it worth while to enter into 
even a simple explanation for the enlightenment of 
a little girl who was only seven years old. Yet, 
through all these years I have kept a vivid recollec- 
tion of my wonder and my earnest desire to under- 
stand. I should have remembered equally well, per- 
haps, a simple and succinct reply to my question. 

We never know what part of the day's experience 
will register itself indelibly upon a little child's 
brain. A parent should let no single opportunity 
slip of implanting useful ideas. And what he says 



282 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

to-day he may have to repeat to-morrow in another 
form. No matter; it is by adding bit to bit that 
the idea finally grows solid in the little one's mind. 
In the midst of hurried and absorbing occupations we 
should pause to answer a searching question ; not in a 
roundabout, careless fashion, but in a manner that 
will enable the child to carry on the train of thought 
for himself. Give the little, perplexed thing a start ! 
It is necessary for the mother to read and digest one 
or two authoritative books in every department of 
knowledge, so that she may get from a large store 
of facts a sound and genuine principle that she may 
offer as a beacon light to her child. There are fine 
opportunities now for women to gain acquaintance 
with the laws of their country. " Societies for Politi- 
cal Study " abound. Before long every mother should 
have learned enough, either from taking sides in de- 
bates or from reading reports of lectures, to be com- 
petent to instruct her child in the science of govern- 
ment. I wonder how many mothers are intending 
to apply their knowledge to this purpose? 



CHAPTEE XVIII 

The Advantages of Teavel 

" I should like to have the pupil begin to travel in his 
infancy, especially — thereby killing two birds with one 
stone — -into neighboring countries where his tongue, while 
it is yet supple, may be formed to new languages." — Mon- 
taigne. 

WE are truly a nation of travelers. It is 
said that the first thing an American 
does when he settles a new piece of 
country is to build a railroad. Almost simultane- 
ously goes upward the smoke from the chimney of 
a school-house. The smoke stack of the locomotive 
offers greater attractions to the lad racing along with 
his carelessly held pile of books than do the desk 
and bench with their suggestions of knowledge. He 
loiters to observe the engineer descend at a station 
to oil his machinery and notes critically the condi- 
tion of wheels and pistons. What a nuisance it is to 
have to spend hours in-doors, over dull lessons ! 

283 



284 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

There is reason for this instinctive preference. 
The one thing breathes the fulness of actual life ; the 
other is but a preparatory step toward action. Book 
knowledge is, compared with actual experience, as 
" moonlight unto sunlight, as water unto wine," in 
its effect upon character. What we read influences 
our thoughts but what we see and hear quickens our 
blood and stirs our feelings. Pedants become narrow 
in their sympathies, while travelers naturally grow 
tolerant, excusing much because they have an oppor- 
tunity to compare men with their neighbors and to 
understand the limitations of natural environments. 
All except dreamers are natural explorers. The 
more civilized a nation is the more adventurous are 
its citizens. In all times it has been the policy of 
enlightened rulers to send its wisest, most responsible 
men to visit other countries for the purpose of study- 
ing their social conditions. In olden times the sons 
of kings passed certain terms among neighboring 
people, not more to establish friendly relations than to 
discover the reason for their prosperity or^ their 
poverty, and return to put their new wisdom in prac- 
tise for their own benefit. Increase of knowledge 
and a broader understanding of human nature have 



THE ADVANTAGES OF TEAVEL 285 

been the avowed reasons for traveling, but there are 
unacknowledged reasons that exert even a. stronger 
influence. 

There is a certain spirit of restlessness that seeks 
vent in mere change of place, without regard to any 
intellectual advantage that may come of it. Ger- 
mans call it the " wanderlust." Erench people are 
singularly free from it, because they are intensely 
patriotic and exceedingly occupied with their per- 
sonal development. When they go abroad it is with 
a set purpose; either to accumulate money or ideas. 
But they always intend to return home to let their 
native country get the advantage of whatever they 
may have gained. The Americans, however, often 
travel aimlessly; because it is the fashion; because 
they have money to squander ; because they are tired 
and want variety, of any kind whatsoever. There 
are bureaus that now take charge of these restless 
people and give them a little education in art and 
geography at so much per mile. Eailroad guides 
indicate what they are to admire, and sight-seeing 
vans meet them at stations to prevent their getting 
lost and wandering around to look at the wrong 
things in strange cities. I think all this must do a 



286 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

good deal of good. But there are a few people who 
like to make up their own itineraries ; who plan long 
in advance of a trip, and arrange successive journeys 
so that in the course of time they may go over a great 
deal of space and get varied impressions of scenery 
and industries. Their notebooks are very unortho- 
dox, but they gather in impressions that broaden 
their general views. 

How many parents, though, consider that sys- 
tematic travel, undertaken deliberately and with a 
definite purpose, has an important part to play in 
education? It has long been customary to add the 
finishing touch to the education of a son or daughter 
by a term of foreign travel. But often it is a costly 
and disappointing experiment because it is under- 
taken without any true feeling of its object and aim. 
The young people go merely for pleasure and from 
the desire of increasing their social importance. 
They wander through cathedrals and picture galleries, 
gape at Constantinople, shudder over Egypt, and on 
the whole, wish, as did poor Caddy Jellaby, that 
" Africa was dead " ; since it only exists to bore and 
weary. But their return home is a triumph, for 



THE ADVANTAGES OF TEAVEL 287 

they " have heen abroad for six months, you know ! " 
And until they go again, and get shocked out of their 
egotism by a wider view of something seen hurriedly 
and miscomprehended, they talk learnedly of Paris, 
London and Rome, which they do not know in the 
least. 

Superficial sight-seeing is not travel. Old Doctor, 
Johnson remarked that foreign travel added little to 
the facilities of conversation in those who had been 
abroad. But then he was critical as to what con- 
stitutes conversation ; it really does afford themes for 
talk. But very few travelers in the Old World give 
their stay-at-home friends anything worth having 
when they come back. Usually they seem to have 
been jaded, confused, satiated with variety. Their 
impressions have not been classified and remain per- 
manently incoherent. 

It is deeply true that anything which is under- 
taken without a moral impulse for its basis cannot 
enlighten us, but merely satisfies the instinct of su- 
perficial curiosity. There is a vast difference be- 
tween the mass of rubbish brought back from over the 
seas by the newspaper reporter who " does " the globe 



288 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

within a limited number of days, on a wager, and the 
calm, well digested views of such travelers as Bayard 
Taylor and Paul Bourget. 

The one made the voyage to Europe while he was 
young, under circumstances of extreme deprivation, 
which few young persons would now think endurable. 
" An enthusiastic desire of visiting the Old World 
haunted me from early childhood," he says in 
" Views-a-Eoot." And he observed with simplicity 
in the introduction that such a journey allowed him 
greater opportunities than could be enjoyed by richer 
tourists for the study of human nature in every con- 
dition of life. Bourget, journeying luxuriously 
through America, avowed the same aim. Somehow, 
I like the Erench critic better, warmly as my sym- 
pathy goes out to the brilliant young American. 
Bourget succeeded in more completely placing him- 
self en rapport with the country he visited. To un- 
derstand other people well it is necessary to efface 
oneself to a certain extent in their company, and 
get their point of view. 

And this is where our young people are generally 
at fault. They go away from home to be seen and 
heard; they carry their egotism, their little bundle 



THE ADVANTAGES OF TEAVEL 289 

of prejudices with them. It is wonderful how 
deeply imbued even a little child can be with feelings 
antagonistic to people whose customs are different 
from those that prevail in his OAvn home. It is par- 
ents who create this inflexibility. They too often 
provide for their children's entrance into the world 
by painting that world as bad. " My dear, beware 
of wandering beyond the gate," warned a Kussian 
mother when her young son reached the age of curi- 
osity. " The people will dynamite you if you go 
out of the park." 

Is it better to be dynamited young or grow up to 
hate and fear mankind ? 

Eew mothers have the self-restraint to keep their 
opinions concerning other people to themselves, leavi 
ing to their children the valuable training to be got 
by the constant correction of hasty ideas, through 
experience. Childhood should be adaptable, but in 
our country it seldom is. With the true American 
temperament the wax of infancy hardens quickly 
into the marble of maturity. There is therefore, 
great need of leaving to children as long as possible, 
their natural credulity and confidingness. It is sad 
to hear a young skeptic criticise his elders; to see a 



290 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

sneer on baby lips. I should rather watch my child 
closely, so that no harm might come to his innocence, 
and let him believe a little longer that the world is all 
good, true and beautiful. Detestable is that doctrine 
of preparing the young for life by showing them its 
uglier side first. It is dangerous to hold up the ex- 
amples of evil before children, for from this time 
they will look for it and expect to find it everywhere. 
Let us train them to right standards and let them do 
their own comparing. When they go out among 
strangers it should be in the mental attitude of respect 
for their peculiarities. " Doubtless," we should sug- 
gest, " you appear as queer to them." 

If upon childish simplicity there has been grafted 
a broad interest in other people and other lands, 
journeying will become a valuable part of education 
during the earlier years. Babies should not, ordi- 
narily, be taken on journeys, with a view to their 
intellectual advantage. At the bottle age the 
jolting of cars while encouraging to repose of body 
is often provocative of spleen and unreasonable 
prejudices against strange countries f Seven years at 
least, should have been attained by the young person 
before his mind will be in a state to appreciate even 



THE ADVANTAGES OF TRAVEL 291 

the more general aspects of foreign lands. It is 
quite doubtful if children get much permanent bene- 
fit from trips to Europe. For the purpose of learn- 
ing modern languages residence abroad for a few 
years, between the ages of seven and twelve, is of 
great advantage. But otherwise than for the sake 
of the languages, these tours are rather detrimental 
than useful. To see many things which cannot be 
understood, and which there is no real wish to under- 
stand, brings about an indifference toward what is 
strange. Afterward, when the proper age to appre- 
ciate such things arrives, the edge of curiosity will 
have been dulled, and the cream of the first impres- 
sion skimmed away. The youthful tourist often 
shows in his face that he is confronted with greater 
wonders than he can take in. He gets blase with 
the extraordinary. He has begun at the wrong end, 
and it is doubtful if he can ever get back the fresh- 
ness, the enthusiastic curiosity which has been 
quenched. 

All this is unnatural. The young are eager ex- 
j)lorers when they are journeying toward that which 
has interest for them. But their sympathies are more 
with the present, with the near-by. For this reason 



292 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

we should be ruled by the axiom of our greatest 
philosopher and " proceed from the known to the 
unknown." Eamiliarize a child early with his im* 
mediate surroundings and so prepare him gradually 
for extended journeyings. Show him all the inter- 
esting features of his native place, the haunts which 
strangers come to see, but which probably you have 
yourself, never taken the trouble to visit. How 
often I have heard elderly men and women say that 
they always meant to go to see such and such a 
place, within easy access of their homes, but haven't 
got there yet ! 

Journeyings with little ones should always be 
leisurely, not hurried. The parent should be an in- 
telligent, patient guide, ready to explain matters that 
arouse the child's interest; ready to lead him on to 
fresh scenes with increased power to understand them. 
Alas, mothers mostly love their children's bodies 
more than they love their intellects. They are so- 
licitous for their souls, but know comparatively little 
about the working of their minds. They often seem 
to have no conception of their vast intellectual re- 
sponsibility. Look at the average mother, leaning 
back in the day coach of a Westward-bound express. 



THE ADVANTAGES OF TRAVEL 203 

She is absorbed in her paper-backed novel. She left 
home determined to leave all her cares behind her; 
to see new things that will rest her by their variety. 
She reads persistently. Nevertheless, there is her 
child — a bright-faced, rather wistfnl looking little 
creature of half a dozen years. 

She turns from the window. " Look, mamma, 
what river is that ? " 

" That, child — oh, that is the same river we saw 
awhile ago." 

" Mamma, quick ! What is that great building 
showing against the sky % Such a queer shape ! We 
are in another town." 

" So we are, child. I don't know ! Amuse your- 
self. Don't bother me!" 

An elderly man in the rear catches the child's dis- 
appointed gaze as the mother settles back to her book 
and shrugs his shoulders with a cynical smile. Is 
she ignorant or careless ? Something of both. The 
fathers are a little better, because it is more of a 
novelty to them to hear their children's questions. 
Then too, they are more objective. Their business 
keeps them in touch with the outside world. I have 
heard a man say that one should never ask a direction 



294 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

of a woman; ten to one, she will make a misleading 
mistake. However, there are charming exceptions; 
when a woman does know the way she will often go 
far out of her path to help another. But children 
usually prefer taking trips with their fathers. Be- 
sides being more interesting, they are usually allowed 
more personal independence, and they learn to take 
care of themselves. 

There are very few ideal guardians, such as Mr. 
George in the " Rollo " books. He trains his young 
nephew to take charge of little excursions, and to 
make his own way, unaided, among strangers in a 
foreign country where a tongue unfamiliar to the 
lad is spoken. Many valuable hints can be gleaned 
by thoughtful parents from these little books, which 
are meant particularly for children. The idea of 
permitting a lad or even a girl, to organize and take 
charge of small trips is not a bad one ; provided they 
know the ground somewhat. There could be less 
benefit if the ground to be gone over is altogether 
strange. In that case a mother ought to be cicerone, 
and study up her itinerary a little in advance, so that 
no chance of thorough observation may be lost. Bet- 
ter for any child to know well one landscape, one 



THE ADVANTAGES OF TRAVEL 295 

county, one state, than to have been a superficial globe 
trotter. 

I do not say that one should see the whole of his 
own country before going abroad; but he should see 
its characteristic features. Is there anything su- 
perior to Niagara in Europe? I think not. And 
the Rocky Mountains are beyond description in 
words. All the Western continent is rich in surprises 
and marvels. And our land is the land of the living. 
Offering astounding contrasts, presenting in little all 
the races and something of their life, it yet deals 
with what touches ourselves at every point, and there- 
fore is the more comprehensible by young minds. 
It is most interesting to them, because they are nat- 
urally in sympathy with it. Life, progress, fresh 
creative forces at work everywhere, make of America 
the land of vigorous youth, while Europe, full of dead 
interests, mingled at every turn with suggestions that 
appeal to a mature, cultivated mind, may well be 
reserved as the cap-sheaf of a complete education. 



CHAPTEK XIX 

Talented Children 

" Tell me what you admire and I will tell you what you 
are; at least, as regards your talents, tastes and character." 
— Sainte-Beuve. 

IE we would know whether our child has any kind 
of ability that is likely to bring him to distinc- 
tion it is necessary for us to understand the 
signs that indicate the presence of talent. 

The first and most positive sign is a strong taste 
for some particular kind of effort. Many and various 
as tastes are they are all based upon one single founda- 
tion, so that where that is present we may be sure 
that capacity is present. I do not allude to mere 
fancies, or likings for artificial and trivial things ; but 
to those preferences that seem to be rooted in char- 
acter. One may have a taste for every sort of 
frivolity, but that is merely a passion of the senses, 
not of the mind. It is curious that every great ca- 

296 



TALENTED CHILDREN 297 

parity has its ignoble satellite, a kind of trailer that 
often puts on the cast-off garments of its leader and 
deceives the unwary on-looker by its flaunting airs. 
A child under the influence of one of these mock 
talents will exhibit, perhaps, some signs of the genuine 
capacity before sinking down to his natural level; 
such young people are precocious, and frequently 
surprise and delight their parents by exhibitions of 
superiority that soon disappear. It is well known 
that the lower the species, in general, the earlier its 
specimens come to maturity. Little negroes are 
extraordinarily wise at four years and dull at four- 
teen. Nervous and volatile children of superficial 
parents sometimes present an appearance of youthful 
brilliancy that induces high expectations of their fu- 
ture; but they seldom fulfil these hopes. Tallow 
sputters more than wax, but wastes sooner. 

One should be very fearful of encouraging " smart- 
ness " in a child. In fact, the more assurance he 
exhibits the more one may doubt the possession of 
any real ability. Precocity is often but the rapid 
response made by very malleable natures to unusual 
stimulus of circumstances. An ambitious and adroit 
parent, wholly intent on pushing his offspring to an 



298 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

exhibition of remarkable feats may readily have a 
" phenomenon " in his family ; before it tumbles down 
to mediocrity or stupidity. But the natural develop- 
ment of an intelligent being demands time as an es- 
sential element of normal growth, and if the begin- 
ning is encouraging there should be no urging of ca- 
pacity. One of the best authorities on psychology 
of the will states that we should not absolutely teach 
the child anything except in response to his curiosity ; 
that we should be guided in educational methods by 
his pace. With some modification I believe this to 
be the correct theory: if the surroundings are what 
they should be the child's intelligence will be the 
normal guide to his education ; he may be instructed 
at the rate he seems best able to proceed. Scientists 
now acknowledge that education has most effect on 
mediocre minds. It can do a great deal with them, 
less for those that are highly endowed, while talented 
persons, even though they may receive all the usual 
courses of schooling, usually educate themselves. 
They gain their most valuable education through the 
exercise of their strongest faculty. Work is their 
tutor and self-directing energy their college. 

Parents and tutors need to have a care that their 



TALENTED CHILDREN 299 

efforts to be helpful to their children do not inter- 
fere with the natural development of their faculties. 
Sometimes such an interference comes about through 
a mistake about their tastes and capacities, but oftener 
because a parent is anxious to direct the career of 
his son or daughter from some conventional standard. 
But no preference of our own should make us exert 
an undue influence over the future of the individual 
who must live out his own destiny after parents have 
passed away. " True education/' said Guyot, " is 
disinterested. It rears the child for himself, for the 
world, above all, for humanity." There is now a 
broader view of personal liberty in the choice of a 
life pursuit than obtained in the days of our forebears. 
Puritan ministers dedicated their most promising 
sons to the work they considered divine, irrespective 
of any contrariness on the part of the " chosen ves- 
sel." A departure from that fixed destiny was sor- 
rowfully disapproved. One of my relatives tells a 
story of how his father — a notable pillar of the 
church — rebuffed the efforts of a visiting cousin, 
who was a commodore in our navy, to advance the in-? 
terests of his young son. " Jim," he observed, " I 
can do something for the boy. I'll send him to West 



300 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

Point" " Isaac," solemnly returned the father, " I 
hope to see him on the walls of Zion, preaching sal- 
vation to the heathen." Years afterward the young 
man enlisted in the army. He would better have had 
the easier start, since his fate was so fixed; but the 
father could not think so. 

We should study the individuality of our child 
from his birth, so that we may avoid a wasteful em- 
ployment of his energies in pursuits that are alien 
to his disposition and foreign to his needs. The par- 
ticular development of any special faculty should 
always rest upon the basis of broad general culture, 
and even where there are unmistakable signs of talent 
this should not be dispensed with. The mother 
ought to be zealous in affording to her child every 
opportunity for broad culture; for the tendency of the 
day is toward specializing, and unless we gain in our 
earlier days a good general knowledge of literature 
and science the probability is that there will never be 
time for it afterwards. However, the child of marked 
ability not seldom exhibits extreme restlessness under 
any kind of instruction that has nothing to do with 
the subject he prefers, and we must not keep him too 
closely to the beaten track. Pegasus cannot be har- 



TALENTED CHILDREN" 301 

nessed to a plow, but will insist on flying, even 
if he provokes scandal by bis escapades. We may 
bold out to original young persons as inducements to 
the fulfilling of distasteful tasks, the incentive of a 
privilege of afterward devoting themselves to what 
they like better. 

There is scarcely anything in which we have so 
much need of caution as in the matter of influencing 
our child's activity. Indeed, with children who are 
able and clever advice and influence must be indirect 
rather than personal. Put opportunities in their way 
and then leave them alone. In order to test their 
talent and develop their power of persistency it is 
well to interpose slight obstacles in their path once in 
awhile. Tenacity of purpose is the bed-rock of suc^ 
cess in any career, and we w r ant to find out whether 
our child has it. If he returns again and again to 
a thing from which he has been distracted and pa- 
tiently conquers difficulties we may be sure that 
he is made of the right stuff. It augurs well for 
the destiny of a child if he dries his tears after a 
mishap and sets to work to repair the disaster. 
When he grows- up and fronts the greater failures of 
life he will not be one of those who are continually 



302 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

calling out upon their " bad luck " instead of at- 
tempting to mend it. 

The one unmistakable sign of superior ability is 
concentration. " Concentration/' said Emerson, " is 
the secret of success; in art, in war, and in fact, in 
all the affairs of human life." It exhibits itself so 
early that we may detect signs of it in the youngest in- 
fant. The baby who grasps your finger in a tentative, 
inquiring manner and holds it fast with a gradually 
increasing pressure, while his eyes regard you 
steadily, is an embryo personage to be some day 
reckoned with. When, later on, he sets his little 
heart on a certain toy and is not to be weaned from 
his preference by the display of other attractive ob- 
jects ; when he shows precocity in realizing differences 
and manifests both likings and dislikes strongly, re- 
joice over this little one, for he doubtless possesses 
some of that singleness of purpose which is the essence 
of all genius. 

Between genius and talent there is a great gulf. 
Genius is a fusion of the emotional and intellectual 
natures which gives to ability the heat of a passion; 
the object of its preference is loved like a mistress, 
sought through the world, suffered for, died for, with 



TALENTED CHILDREN 303 

enthusiasm, with joy. The work itself is the absorb- 
ing idea, not the end and aim, and all other con- 
siderations are lost sight of while the way is torn 
through incredible obstacles. Genius disdains any 
other mode of self-development than its " idea " ; be- 
ing wholly one-sided and just a little mad. 

The history of genius is one of struggle against 
adversities and we should not be sorry that there is 
slight probability of our finding a real genius among 
our children. Galton observes that there have never 
been more than four hundred great geniuses ; but he 
leaves out Americans. Assuredly, however, genius 
is not a gift to be craved, although just a touch of it 
lends romance to life. Where it exists in supreme 
degree it subjects its owner to some of the most dis- 
tressing sufferings ; where it is present even to a high 
degree, but is accompanied by limitations and a tem- 
perament that hinders and aborts its development, 
we have a spectacle of frailty so disheartening as to 
make us turn with relief to more robust and practical 
specimens of humanity. 

One of the happy features of talent is that it is 
practical. More of the head than of the heart, it 
prudently looks to the results of action as it is not 



304 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

dominated by an instinct that defies reason. A young 
person who has talent and no trace of genius is likely 
to have a successful career in any pursuit he chooses 
to follow if he stands to his choice and with all his 
mind and strength wills to succeed, undaunted by 
obstacles. 

Strength of will is inseparable from talent, and is 
one of its earliest indications. A vacillating, very 
tractable child may grow into a lovely character, but 
scarcely a great one. Do not let us confound strength 
of will with wilfulness; they are entirely different. 
The one is the outcome of a distinct purpose conceived 
in the person's own mind and adhered to in obedience 
to some inward behest that speaks louder than authori- 
ties ; the other is revolt against restraints to impulses 
or whims. When a child shows determination to have 
or to do a certain thing, let us find out the mainspring 
of his conduct ; whether, in the old-fashioned phrase, 
he has " a strong will or a great won't." In the one 
case he needs only guidance, in the other more 
careful, anxious training. I rejoice in a child who 
shows early a strong bent for something; who is 
resolved to do that particular thing even if he is torn 
away from it and punished. It is a good dog who re- 



TALENTED CHILDKEN 305 

turns to the scent, after being punished for his ob- 
stinacy. Often he proves to be in the right and his 
master in the wrong. There are false scents, but 
should we for that reason make a child distrust his 
own instinct ? 

Zeal in work is another sign of real ability. But by 
zeal, I do not mean necessarily, the plodding habit. 
I mean the innate interest in effort that impels one 
to go on after the required amount has been finished. 
There is a nature that makes requirements of itself, 
higher than any that outsiders would dare suggest. 
" I have a standard," averred Flaubert, " above other 
standards. I seek not so much to please the world 
as to satisfy myself." The child who plays heartily 
when he plays and works with all his might at what- 
ever he undertakes has no need of persuasions to be 
industrious or commands to make progress. All his 
parents should do is to keep careful oversight of him 
and advise him when he is puzzled. A tendency to 
be desultory, such as is often exhibited by children 
before they know themselves, should be gently checked 
and steadiness encouraged. Teach the little one to 
finish what he has begun if it is worth finishing ; but 
as many infantile pursuits are trivial enough to weary 



306 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

their young projectors it is injudicious to make them 
continue what they have grown tired of during the 
process of creation. 

Every man or woman who has amounted to much 
has heen distinguished hy the power of working hard ; 
and usually this determination has betrayed itself 
very early in life. Genius alternates periods of 
frantic effort with spells of idleness in which spent 
forces recover tone. But talent proceeds more 
steadily and smoothly. Its rests are regular and its 
work more methodical. Without method it is lost, 
and I believe that there is no more certain sign of 
ability in a child than an innate tendency to methodize 
his labors and the disposal of his time. Some girls 
and boys fret at the arrangement parents or teachers 
make of their hours, sensible that they need some other 
method, but scarcely having the logic to explain 
their intuitions. Wherever there is a persistent dis- 
content with regulations imposed by authorities I 
think it would be a wiser plan to let the young person 
re-arrange his time to suit his own supposed needs. 
If the young daughter wants to study before day- 
break and repose herself later on, there may " be a 



TALENTED CHILDREN" 307 

reason," as the slang of the hour runs. Let her ex- 
periment a little with herself. And if the boy insists 
upon learning his lessons at midnight, after the family 
has retired, saying that his mind is brighter then, 
absolute prohibition should have a better foundation 
than the extra gas-bill. After physiology has given 
its enlightenment he may change his mind. If not, 
then he really does know his own nature better than 
his guardians. 

But in order to bring to fruition the beautiful germ 
of talent regular habits should be inculcated in the 
plastic days of early childhood. The little one should 
be taught not only to have a particular place for his 
belongings, but a particular time for every special 
duty. When the time has once been chosen it should 
not be lightly changed. Professor William James 
had something to say upon this point which is marked 
by great wisdom : " The great point in all education 
is to make automatic and habitual, as early as possi- 
ble, as many useful actions as we can, and to avoid 
growing into ways that are likely to be disadvan- 
tageous to us as we should guard against the plague. 
The more details of our daily work we can hand over 



308 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

to the infallible and effortless custody of automatism 
the more the higher processes of mind will be set free 
for its own proper work." 

We may set this rational advice off against the 
airy theory of Kousseau that " the child should form 
no habits." I believe that the more good habits, espe- 
cially relating to his mental activities, a child can 
form, the better for his progress. " The habit became 
a need with me," remarked the brilliant but self-willed 
George Sand, referring to her self-imposed discipline 
in regard to fixing hours of work ; " and the need bfr 
came a faculty." 

This is something that ought to be writ large, irt 
letters of light : that the fixed habit of certain occupa- 
tions at certain hours each day confers a positive 
ability to pursue the work undertaken. The mind 
looks for its work as the body for food and digests 
what is given it. Every mortal must eventually find 
out for himself what is the best system, so I should al- 
low even a young child a good deal of liberty, if it 
shows preference. Let it experiment with itself and 
then the defects of any system that is poor will be 
found out and another can be arranged that is better. 

No other discipline is so good for any one as the 



TALENTED CHILDREN 309 

constant measuring of oneself against a high standard. 
The mother's part is to place before her child's eyes 
beautiful ideals; then leave him to Nature. If she 
has succeeded in teaching him to admire truly worthy 
things she has educated him as well as she can. Our 
ideals in early life become our principles later on. 

To have bright, talented children is the laudable 
wish of every father and mother. But let us recollect 
that while talent promises it is character that fulfils. 
Any talent is worthless that has not its roots deep in 
integrity. " A little integrity," said the Sage of Con- 
cord, " is worth any career !" Before we build upon 
our child's ability let us be sure he has in him the 
strength to be true and the courage to hold fast to 
the truth. The honest child is the strong child, for 
he is capable of seeing things as they are, of describing 
them as he sees them, and of rightly judging their 
values. 



CHAPTEE XX 



Esthetic Education 

The one true fountain of beauty is feeling. Feeling re- 
veals to us true ideas." — Schlegel. 

LOVE of beauty is a different thing from love 
of the beautiful. The first is so habitual 
in man as to have become almost an instinct, 
but the latter must be continually developed in each 
generation by proper culture. ~No item of education 
is more important ; no one more neglected. That par- 
ents have small sympathy with this branch of a prac- 
tical education shows how far we all are from 
recognizing the intimate relation of art to morals and 
business. 

Were it not for the sense of the beautiful in man 
we should have no buildings, no factories, no ma- 
chinery, no trades. We should be without enthusiasm 
or ideals. All our intellectual energy originates in 
the instinctive choice of the thing best suited to our 

310 



ESTHETIC EDUCATION 311 

own preservation, and through the habit of selecting 
what is congenial to ns taste comes into being. What 
then, is taste but an enlarging of our instinct for 
life and happiness ? " Much of our happiness," elo- 
quently says Edward Griggs, in his book " The 
Philosophy of Art," is in appreciation ; imagine life 
denuded of it; how intolerably barren our existence 
would be ! " 

How foolish it is then, to neglect the training of 
a faculty that controls our thoughts and guides all the 
acts of our lives. " It is a mere matter of taste," we 
say lightly to the person who differs from us in some 
matter of conduct, politics or religion; as if taste 
were a trifle, and not the unfailing indicator of the 
whole character. 

All our judgments in affairs and in morals are 
founded upon an idea of relative values, and we never 
get beyond choosing the thing that makes appeal to 
our permanent sense of fitness ; that is, to our strongest 
feeling. Every one reaches out after what attracts 
him ; he sees good in it and in nothing else. But the 
feelings can be educated, so that mere glitter shall 
not be taken for true gold, and liking may be trained 
to wait upon understanding. It is through education 



312 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

of our 'preferences that all progress is made. The un- 
taught child naturally chooses the thing that has a 
superficial attraction; his senses lead him toward 
beauty, and not toward the beautiful. Many per- 
sons remain children all their lives in their inability 
to perceive qualities which only reveal themselves to 
careful seekers. A true feeling for beauty, an in- 
stinctive preference for the pure and lovely over that 
which is merely satisfying to the casual glance, is a 
talisman in a labyrinth of falsehood. There are 
people with such nice perceptions that they cannot 
be deceived even about art values respecting which 
they have received no instruction; their taste revolts 
against what is gaudy as certainly as it appreciates 
what is delicate and refined. But they are in the 
small minority. Most of us go astray easily in this 
bewildering world and need standards to guide us 
aright. It is therefore, our duty to develop in the 
child-soul not only a love of the good and beautiful but 
an enthusiastic purpose to look for it everywhere and 
not to be content with anything that does not satisfy 
his highest demands. 

What is the essential element of the beautiful ? 
Harmony between outward appearance and inward 



ESTIIETTC EDUCATION 313 

purpose. Nothing that has something patched on by 
way of ornament, that can be pruned without de- 
stroying its symmetry, that can be altered with benefit 
to its looks is really beautiful. There are few perfect 
objects in Nature, almost none in the world of art; 
but there are millions everywhere about us that have 
the spirit of beauty to such an extent that our minds 
and hearts are not only satisfied but exalted by con- 
templation of them. One can contemplate forever a 
single oak tree, laden with its rich, dark leaves and 
baby acorns, without exhausting its possibilities for 
gratification. The music of a mountain streamlet, 
winding downward through rocky crevices has enough 
melody in it to set one dreaming endlessly. What 
nature can gaze at streaks of forked lightning racing 
through pitch-black clouds and not feel awe-struck by 
suggestions of deeper, wilder harmonies in Nature 
than any the mechanical works of man afford ? 

In natural phenomena the ignorant find only sub- 
jects for superstitious fear ; in the most splendid mani- 
festations of harmonies in color and shapes, merely 
means of gratifying some practical need. An exacer- 
bated old maid whose story was related by Mrs. Stowe, 
awoke one autumn morning and saw in the sky the 



314 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

pale moon of dawn attended by its mysterious star, 
then swiftly overwhelmed by the wonderful tide of 
purple and rose that Aurora throws before her arriv- 
ing car, and all she could find to say was — " It's a 
good day to kill the hog !" 

I dare not think how much training in childhood 
such a nature would have required before it might 
have been rendered susceptible to the meaning of 
beauty in the world. But something might have been 
done, perhaps. With the average child much may 
be accomplished to increase the possibilities of hap- 
piness and enlarge the whole character to an appre- 
ciation of all the sources of harmony and truth. 

I realize the inconveniences that attend such a 
training. When we make our child attentive to de- 
tails, sharpen his perceptions so that he analyzes his 
enjoyments and compares all objects with the per- 
fect standard we have given him, then we shall find 
it hard to live up to the ideals we have encouraged him 
to maintain. He may find the things we are com- 
pelled to support about us insupportable to his ultra- 
refined sensibilities ; he may become hyper-critical of 
appearances, before he gets beyond the stage of fault- 



ESTHETIC EDUCATION 315 

finding into that of larger tolerance. But it is a 
necessary ante-chamber to the realm of peace, this of 
carping at what is distasteful. There are two great 
opposing laws before which all must bow ; possibility 
and actuality. We stand between what we want and 
what we can have and either lament or smile, accord- 
ing to our pluck. It seems to me the right thing to 
teach the child that " noble discontent " with the 
makeshifts of life which does not consist in disdain- 
ing, but in accepting them with eyes open to their 
defects but recognition of the necessity of getting 
along with them until he can by his own efforts at- 
tain to something better. 

" It is but a chromo, my dear, and the collection 
of paintings in the Morgan gallery are wonders. But 
there is a true spirit in this little thing, do you not 
see its meaning 9 Some day, when you have made a 
good deal of money and can have what you love best 
perhaps you may buy a wonderful picture. Mean- 
while, see how much beauty you can discover in 
this poor little thing which is the best we have." 
No true-hearted child will fail to respond nobly to 
such appeal to his right instincts; he will preserve 



316 THE MOTHER IS EDUCATION 

the larger out-look his educated tastes give him, but 
will appreciate too, the little thing that helps to make 
home beautiful. 

With the young good and beautiful are convertible 
terms. Aristotle declared that " Youth loves beauti- 
ful rather than useful conduct/' and despite the latest 
revelations of philanthropists who labor in the big 
American cities to train children, as to their extraordi- 
nary devotion to what is altogether utilitarian, I be- 
lieve that instinctively, youth does appreciate the 
essence of the good in the beautiful. It is pleased 
with fair appearances and cannot divorce them from 
what satisfies moral ideas. The small child always 
finds its mother's face lovely when she is good to 
him ; later on, he deifies his favorites everywhere, not 
believing faultiness possible. Leave him his illu- 
sions! Yet they are not inconsistent with develop- 
ment of that artistic conception of worth which meas- 
ures and scrutinizes, while it admires. If one knows 
how to look for truth he must with equal precision 
discern falsehood, even if found at home. But so 
long as there is no attempt made to deceive, so long 
as there is frankness, neither physical nor mental 
asymmetry will repel even the critical taste of the 



ESTHETIC EDUCATION 317 

well-balanced child. Nothing but a moral disorder 
can make the beloved parent un-beautiful. 

By giving our children right education we impose 
a rigid obligation on ourselves to walk along the same 
path we point out for them, or else we incur the 
penalty of losing their esteem. " You don't do it," 
the young person will say pointedly, when admonished 
on the virtues of moderation and simplicity. Youth, 
severe and uncompromising, is moved by a strong 
impetus, and from young persons trained to keen 
observation we must expect some startling comments 
now and then. " A chieFs among ye takin' notes," 
and a bluff, free tone marks that person young or old, 
who believes that his own opinion is in accord with 
right standards. The critical faculty is the basis and 
accompaniment of sound judgment. Without it a 
person may be temporarily an agreeable companion, 
but he will not be a profitable one and his individual 
life will be a failure. Eor fixity of purpose is essen- 
tial to success, and the purpose which is not chosen 
deliberately, wisely, with a full realization of its 
ultimate rewards, is merely obstinate persistence in 
a weak, shallow fancy. 

It is then, right and necessary for us to develop the 



318 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

critical faculty in our children. Close, careful per- 
ception is the beginning. We may appeal to his 
preference about the colors he sees in flowers, in 
all natural objects, then in such art objects as in- 
terest him in his home. Show him symmetrical 
forms and bid him compare these with others that 
lack symmetry. Contrast the garish and gaudy with 
the lovely and refined in color schemes, and get his 
instinctive ideas. Then, induce him to give his rea- 
sons. State that a mere whimsical " I like it be- 
cause I do," is a silly foundation for a preference, 
and that a reasonable person should be able to recog- 
nize his own reasons. Gradually, he will advance 
beyond that stage when coarse masses of color and 
the big and massive are more attractive than the deli- 
cate and dainty. People of crude taste are seduced 
by what is overwhelming; they like the sensation of 
being stunned by loud music and whirling motions, 
knowing little of pleasure beyond the sense impres- 
sion of delicious coma. We do a great deal if we can 
rescue our child early, from the chance of his being 
made to come under such demoralizing influences as 
may be exerted over him by the brutal forces that 



ESTHETIC EDUCATION 319 

wait about us everywhere, when we go out from the 
seclusion of home into crowds. 

It would scarcely be worth while to spend time 
on the training of the sense of the beautiful in chil- 
dren if it were not inseparable from an education 
of the moral sense. That child who learns to ap- 
preciate beauty, to criticise all departures from it, in 
Nature, in art and in conduct, will not fall an easy 
victim to any debasing temptation. His taste is bis 
bulwark. Esthetic education consists in training the 
mind to perceive and the heart to feel, not only the 
greatest amount of beauty that resides in any object 
or condition, but the greatest amount of moral sym- 
metry ; which is truth. 

We should distinguish between sentiment for what 
is beautiful, and a real appreciation of it. The one 
is superficial, the other discriminating. Yet, there 
is a possibility of general appreciation without knowl- 
edge. Many persons whom opportunity has never 
visited, have an almost passionate appreciation of the 
beautiful. But we find that they usually have the 
moral nature very highly developed. They are capa- 
ble of love; in its highest, purest form. I wonder 



320 THE MOTHEE IK EDUCATION 

whether any nature can love deeply and consistently 
that has not a very strong instinct for the beautiful ; 
as opposed to that superficial liking for the merely 
pretty, which I called before, beauty-love, and less 
worthy than love of the beautiful ? Into the purest 
taste there enters an austere conception of the pure 
and true. It cannot tolerate a lie. 

General impressions naturally come before dis- 
criminating sensations. Young persons fall into rap- 
tures with what they like, because they are not yet 
trained to recognize details and they mistake flights 
of imagination for artistic enjoyment. Without the 
development that comes from training in observation 
and in comparison they must always remain insensi- 
ble to the finer manifestations of beauty. Esthetics, 
as a branch of education, has three notable stages, 
corresponding to the natural progression of our minds 
from the simple to the complex; from what appeals 
to a single sense, as the eye or the ear, to what arouses 
and satisfies all the impulses of our emotional nature. 

Eirst comes love of beauty of material, making ap- 
peal to us as rich and dazzling color; afterward, as 
harmoniously blended tints and symphonies. A 
child's earliest feeling for beauty is admiration for 



ESTHETIC EDUCATION 321 

vividly colored objects, and we must minister long 
and wisely to this yearning before leading him on to 
the next step — which came to our rude fore-fathers 
of the forest — appreciation of form. Much observa- 
tion of Nature is necessary before there comes recog- 
nition of symmetry, of appropriate arrangement. 
And for a really intelligent, sympathetic comprehen- 
sion of beauty of form I believe a logical mind is 
necessary as well as good training. Some degree of 
understanding of it may be developed in almost 
every one. The child who revels in a wild waste of 
confusion may be taught to " bring order out of 
chaos " by adjusting his toys into some pleasing com- 
bination, for instance, and by arranging the furniture 
of a room. If his arrangements are in the highest 
degree eccentric, it is only what can be expected at 
first. By practice he will come to an appreciation 
of symmetry in arrangement. And that is a great 
gain. 

The word " artistic " has been so misapplied that 
most people suppose that it means something rather 
disorderly and hap-hazard. How often literature 
gives us the prim, precise maiden aunt, with her nar- 
row, intense love of exact outline, and the art-loving 



322 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

niece all on fire with raptures over " color har- 
monies " and contempt for everything that is not pic- 
turesque! Let us give our sympathy however, to 
the derided aunt. Craze for color is a lower degree 
of the sense of beauty than appreciation of sym- 
metrical arrangement. Sculpture is a finer achieve- 
ment of the intellect than painting. Savages and 
ignorant children can take pleasure in color display, 
but only an educated mind is moved through effects 
of form. 

Exaggeration sways masses, so the appearance of 
an artistic sensibility usually carries more weight 
with it than the real power, for it rants and poses 
and makes the world gape. So it comes to pass that 
the tuppenny rhymer and the bold dauber in color are 
more valued than the man of magnificent scientific 
imagination, working out results that will influence 
millions, while he is by his age forgot. 

Only sound training in esthetics, which implies a 
sense of true values, can lead us to the highest de- 
gree of enlightenment. The true artist, though he 
may at times indulge in reverie, is not a dreamer, 
but a keen, accurate observer. Patient study of the 
realities in Nature is the basis of all worthy art. 



ESTHETIC EDUCATION 323 

Through this we arrive at the third and highest de- 
gree of attainment of the sense of beauty — appre- 
ciation of associated values, of degrees of perfection. 
To lead our child onward toward this high goal 
we must train his moral nature patiently, Avisely. 
We must teach him to be keenly observant and ac- 
curate in representation; to be true and simple; to 
love virtue, for the good and the beautiful are one. 
Every one cannot learn the gospel of beauty in the 
same way. Different temperaments are alive to dif- 
ferent effects. One child will find the delight of his 
life in music; another in color combinations; more 
rarely there is one who shows preference for form 
and expression and is sensitive to the beautiful as 
exhibited in architecture and in those highest symbols 
of thought — words. The wise parent will minister 
to each child according to its deep, individual need. 



CHAPTEE XXI 

Children in Society 

" Breadth and nutrition are to be constant factors in our 
ideal course of study. Enrichment in its true sense does not 
come by adding more formal studies anywhere, but by sup- 
plying a more full and complete social life in the home and 
in the school. Any studies which minister to this point are 
legitimate." — Dutton. 

ONE of the most marked differences between 
the training of children in the Old World 
and in our country is in the preparation 
given for social life. Over there it is a distinct aim of 
education to enable a young person to enter the world 
well; to bear his part wisely and gracefully among 
others ; to understand what is demanded by his posi- 
tion and pay due consideration to those with whom he 
is brought in contact, according to the measure of his 
social importance. 

Such a training is necessarily regulated by a per- 
vading recognition of caste. The infant peasant is 

324 



CHILDREN IN SOCIETY 325 

imbued with the sense of deference ; the young noble- 
man with that of dignity. Each punctiliously per- 
forms his part. The well reared child of the higher 
class early learns to control his temper, because any 
display of ill-humor is " bad form " ; to be courteous 
because courtesy is a bulwark against rudeness from 
his inferiors and a passport among his equals. 
While the child of humbler class is obliged to prac- 
tise the self-restraint as a means of winning favor 
and " getting on." Each grows up with a shrewd 
apprehension of the importance of forming desirable 
connections, and turning to advantage the chances 
of acquaintanceship. The boy is sent to school forti- 
fied with certain precepts against " low associations " 
and in favor of cultivating those likely to further his 
interests in life. The girl acquires almost from in- 
fancy, notions of " caste." 

There is no denying that such systematic training 
in conduct with a continual view to self-interest has 
a tendency to develop what we call flunkeyism. In 
any nature in which selfishness and meanness over- 
rule the impulses of the heart, there is a ready made 
snob, only needing occasion to manifest the strong 
bias of his character. It is true that any system 



326 THE MOTHEE IN EDUCATION 

which exhibits the differences that incontestably exist 
between the rank and file of society seems to offer 
a sort of sanction to a snobbish estimate of people. 
But is it by any means certain that if these differ- 
ences are not openly declared they will not be found 
out anyway ? If we strive to rear our child in igno- 
rance of all class distinctions, will he continue blind 
to them when, after years have passed, he comes to 
observe the usages of the world ? 

There was a certain young man of high connections 
and undoubtedly " blue " blood, who in the pioneer 
days of our western civilization, threw away all his 
opportunities, to become a missionary among the 
Nebraska Indians. Marrying a southern heiress 
whose possessions consisted mainly of slaves, he re- 
fused to " own " them, and let them all drift off, 
wherever they chose to go. He reared his six chil- 
dren in ignorance of their relationship with notable 
personages in England and in the States, curtly telling 
them, in response to any questions, that " our family 
is like a potato, the best part is under ground." But 
despite the most rigorous repression of instincts of 
family pride those same boys and girls grew to 
maturity burning with desire to find out all they 



CHILDREN" IN SOCIETY 327 

could about the representatives of a name often ap- 
pearing in their histories. Ultimately, they discov- 
ered their claims to belong to certain distinguished 
societies, to which their associates belonged, and made 
it the business of years to hunt up the records that 
saintly minister had taken pains to hide. Every item 
that was encouraging to their desire for social eleva- 
tion was hailed with enthusiasm ; valuable energy and 
time were consumed in research that should have 
been needless, and more thought was bestowed on a 
comparatively trivial matter than would ever have 
been, but for the mistaken efforts of the father 
to repress natural and irrepressible instincts of 
family dignity. 

" Noblesse oblige." The heritage of intellectual 
elevation that has been hardly earned by some worthy 
ancestor should not be ruthlessly torn to shreds when 
he dies, but pass down the ages. Qualities are, after 
all, the only inheritance that stands the test of time. 
Wealth gets dissipated, but honors shine through the 
tarnish of the world's forgetfulness. If a child has 
not the happiness to number a hero among his pro- 
genitors, then we can at least teach him to become 
one himself; to found a family; which is one of the 



328 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

noblest of ambitions, and one inspiring to the true 
American spirit. But it is a poor policy to affect 
a humility about life which we really do not feel, 
and assure our young people that it makes no dif- 
ference what sort of society they go into, so they 
achieve success in affairs. 

As a matter of fact, we are continually classifying 
people ; not so much by tbeir merits, which we know 
only through personal experience, as by their appear- 
ance. There are stages of refinement, and we in- 
stinctively choose for friends those belonging to our 
own level. And we have a right to so choose them. 
If our worldly circumstances are below our worth we 
need not associate with persons whose only likeness to 
ourselves is in the amount of their income. Must 
we take for bosom friends an illiterate sign painter 
because he earns with his hands the same income we 
earn by our brains, and lives as well, so far as ma- 
terial circumstances are concerned ? One blessed ad- 
vantage of this country is that a person who is mani- 
festly " gentle " in virtue and taste belongs by right 
to the highest society. There is no possibility of 
realizing an ideal " social equality " so long as there 
exists great differences in the capacities of indi- 



CHILDREN" IN SOCIETY 329 

viduals. In our inmost hearts we do not believe in it, 
nor want it. Why then, keep up the pretense? 

It is of very little use to be hypocritical with our 
children ; to call public schools " great social level- 
ers," and allow them to choose their playmates from 
the street. Our preferences, our innate sense of pro- 
priety break through the thin crust of determined 
virtue at the first alarm of an undesirable friendship. 
We cannot have Clarence inviting Mike Dolan into 
the house, nor let Beatrice bring Susan Eooney to 
dinner. Why not ? They are undeniably good chil- 
dren in their way; truthful, good-humored, amusing. 
But certain unmistakable traits, certain little defects 
of manner, certain tendencies toward lower standards 
of thought and principle, set them apart from us. 
The gulf may be bridged by the development on their 
part of remarkable talents and energy, at some future 
time, — such opportunities our country affords — but 
at present our good sense bids us desire for our chil- 
dren companions whose social status is similar to their 
own ; whose education and training swing along par- 
allel lines. It is necessary that those canons of so- 
ciety which exact deportment, refinement of manner, 
pleasing appearance, be obeyed by ourselves, even if 



330 THE MOTHER m EDUCATION 

we do not wish them recognized by our children. 
And notwithstanding all our superior, highly demo- 
cratic talk, we enforce them. It seems to me that 
we should have the honesty to talk and act alike. 
Either make our theories fit our practice or our 
practice suit our theories; and acknowledge both 
frankly to our children. 

The difference between theory and practice leads 
to misunderstandings between the elders and juniors 
in our families. The children are at first honestly 
all for equality. They take us at our word. Bit by 
bit, shame-facedly, we are compelled to acknowledge 
the hollowness of our axioms; little by little permit 
them to see into the unalterable laws that govern hu- 
man intercourse, and understand that while worth is 
worth and " a man's a man for a' that " yet prac- 
tically, we may not dine with the gardener nor in- 
vite the Italian fruitman's pretty little girls to our 
parties. 

Well? Then the children begin to learn some- 
thing about class distinctions. We may keep the 
facts concealed, but they come to the front at length 
because they are facts, like the rotation of the earth. 
I submit the question whether all the preliminary 



CHILDREN IN SOCIETY 331 

humbugging was worth while ; whether we might not 
better do as they do in the Old World and candidly 
admit the existence of social degrees and prepare the 
children from the first to take their proper place in 
society. With the one distinct advantage peculiar 
to Republican governments, that while we are born 
to certain spheres and only evil-doing degrades us, 
great talents or merit may raise us to the highest 
position. 

There are two points in favor of the European 
system of training. It is rational, insomuch as it 
does not try to do what cannot really be done, and 
break down in the attempt; and it conduces to an 
excellent end — self-restraint and self-control. It 
must be confessed that in this respect we are weak. 
With us the individual is over-prominent. Our chil- 
dren are not taught that right and beautiful conduct 
consists in constantly recognizing and deferring to 
the rights of others. They hear little of the claims of 
society, much of their own privileges and liberties. 
By nature and example they are energetic and ag- 
gressive and they carry the impulsiveness of child- 
hood into the acts of mature life. So they form ties 
of the most sacred nature without at all comprehend- 



332 THE MOTHER IN EDUCATION 

ing that the destinies of other individuals are bound 
up with their own, and that it is not possible to sepa- 
rate one's personal interest from that of others. 

Our young people seem to the better poised and 
more self -restrained Europeans young heathen. Fas- 
cinating because innocent and frank in their monopoly 
of attention; but for all that, of the nature of sav- 
ages who know no law but their will, no negations 
save the limit of opportunity. It must seem to 
thoughtful people that it may be expedient to change 
all this. If the claims of society are real, permanent 
and governed by fixed laws, why should not an un- 
derstanding of them become a feature of home train- 
ing in every household? Without false shame, we 
may tell our children, as English parents unhesitat- 
ingly do, that one of their prime duties is to learn 
to get on well with the world ; that one should preserve 
his own self-respect, yet give deference where it is 
due. We may develop in them those faculties that 
give strength to character and still diligently cultivate 
at the same time those minor graces which are the 
passports to good society. 

Emerson, our saint and prophet, the simplest of 
men as he was one of the wisest, bore witness to the 



CHILDREN m SOCIETY 333 

importance of manner and tone. " Manners," he 
said, in one of those wonderful passages that remain 
to us as beacons in the dark places of worldly dis- 
illusionment, " are the happy way of doing things ; 
each, once a stroke of genius or of love, now hardened 
into usage. They form at last a rich varnish with 
which the routine of life is washed and its details 
adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew 
drops which give such a depth to the morning mead- 
ows. . . . The power of manners is incessant — an 
element as unconcealable as fire. The nobility can- 
not in any country be disguised, and no more in a re- 
public or a democracy than in a kingdom. No man 
can resist their influence. There are certain manners 
which are learned in good society, of that force that 
if a person have them, he or she must be considered, 
and is welcome everywhere, though without beauty, 
or wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and ac- 
complishments, and you give him the mastery of 
palaces and fortunes wherever he goes. He has not 
the trouble of earning or winning them, they solicit 
him to enter and possess." 

However wise or talented a person may be we do 
not care to have much to do with him unless he is 



334 THE MOTHEK IN EDUCATION 

agreeable. Diogenes did not have to refuse many 
invitations. Many very great men are admired at a 
distance and their absence from scenes of pleasure 
sustained with cheerfulness. Doubtless there are 
times when they long to come down from their heights 
and mingle with their fellows but they have never 
learned the art of pleasing and they suffer the nat- 
ural result. Very few persons can be happy isolated 
thus from their fellows. Superiority is meager 
satisfaction for the heart. Eor one person who can 
afford to isolate himself and live wholly on his own 
mental resources there are thousands who feel the 
need of sympathy and affection which is constantly 
passing round among people who are even casually 
thrown together. There are comparatively few times 
in our lives when we crave or can respond to intense 
love. If it was constantly proffered us it would ex- 
haust the heart. The sweet, homely courtesies of 
everyday life, a smile that is given without a thought, 
a pleasant phrase that is uttered merely through the 
habit of politeness, are as a wholesome, refreshing cur- 
rent that flows gently through society, free to all who 
can pay the little price that entitles to its advantages. 
Every one is naturally in society, whether he 



CHILDREN IN SOCIETY 335 

chooses or not. He is born into it. During a life- 
time a person may pass from one clique to another, 
like a rolling marble ; there are so many cliques that 
he must find his requirements met at last. But 
whether he has little or much to do with others he 
cannot escape some contact with them. And it is 
essential for his satisfaction and for his worldly suc- 
cess that he should know how to make a good impres- 
sion. I would tell a child even this much : that it is 
policy to learn the accomplishments that are expected 
from him in the place he is by birth entitled to oc- 
cupy. Certain things are due to society from him. 
If he chooses to go beyond them it is well. He will 
naturally rise to the level of his talent. But the 
little amenities of life he must know; how to bear 
himself, how to dress, — whether richly or plainly, 
at least, with good taste; how to converse and above 
all, how to restrain his impulses and act with dignity 
and self-possession. 

This ease, accompanied by modesty, is the most at- 
tractive demeanor a young person can practise. For 
the world always regards with considerable interest 
the person who mingles with it gracefully and still 
gives an impression of reserved force. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Letters and Lectures on Education, Johann Friedrich 

Herbart 
How Gertrude Teaches her Children, Pestalozzi 
Herbart and the Herbartians, Charles DeGarmo 
The Meaning of Education, N. M. Butler 
Infant Mind, W. Preyer 
The Psychology of Number, McLellan 
Glimpses of the Animate World, Johonnot 
Story of the Plants, Grant Allen 
Methods of Study in Natural History, Agassiz 
Learning to Draw, Viollet le Due 
Drawing from Memory, Mme. Calve 
Topics in Geography, Nichols 
Countries of Europe, A. L. 0. E. 
Study of Language, Marcel 

Art of Teaching and Studying Languages, F. Gouin 
Special Methods in Geography, Charles McMurray 
The Wide World, Issued through Ginn and Company 
Geographical Nature Studies, Issued through Ginn and 

Company 
Trotters' Lessons in the New Geography, issued through 

D. C. Heath and Company 
Hall's Methods of Teaching History, published by 

D. C. Heath and Company 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Household History of the United States and Its 

People, Edward Eggleston 
Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them, Richard 

Thomas Wyche 
Heroes Every Child Should Know, Hamilton W. 

Mabie 
Stories and Story Telling, E. P. St John 
The Story of the Greeks, H. A. Guerber 
Picturesque Geographical Eeadings, Chas. F. King 
Stories to Tell to Children, Sara Cone Bryant 
How to Tell Stories to Children, Sara Cone Bryant 
Days and Deeds a Hundred Years Ago, Gertrude L. 

Stone and M. Grace Fichett 
Everyday Life in the Colonies, Gertrude L. Stone and M. 

Grace Fichett 
Merrie England, Grace Greenwood. New edition issued 

through Ginn and Company 
Heroes of Everyday Life, Fanny E. Coe 
About Old Story Tellers, Donald G. Mitchell 
Our Young Folks' Plutarch, edited by Rosalie Kaufman 
Historic Stories and Ballads, Rupert S. Holland 
Peeps at many Lands; Italy, Sweden, France, England, 

John Fennimore 



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